Monday, May 06, 2024
The war against the Jewish story
On the occasion of Yom HaShoah, which began yesterday evening, Yossi Klein Halevi isn’t calling for more or better Holocaust education, but for something else:Johnathan Tobin: Yom Hashoah after Oct. 7: How Holocaust education failed
The ease with which anti-Zionists have managed to portray the Jewish state as genocidal, a successor to Nazi Germany, marks a historic failure of Holocaust education in the West. This moment requires a fundamental rethinking of the goals and methodology of Holocaust education. By overemphasizing the necessary universal lessons of the Holocaust, many educators too easily equated anti-Semitism with generic racism. The intention was noble: to render the Holocaust relevant to a new generation. But in the process, the essential lesson of the Holocaust—the uniqueness not only of the event itself but of the hatred that made it possible—was often lost.
Holocaust education was intended, in large part, to protect the Jewish people. . . . Yet the movement to turn Israel into the world’s criminal nation emerges from a generation that was raised with Holocaust consciousness, both in formal education and the arts. And this latest expression of the anti-Semitism of symbols is justified by some anti-Zionists as honoring “the lessons of the Holocaust.”
Unlike the Iranian regime, which clumsily tries to deny the historicity of the Holocaust, anti-Zionists in the West intuitively understand that coopting and inverting the Holocaust is a far more effective way of neutralizing its impact.
We keep being told that many of those who demonstrate in favor of an end to the current war that would leave Hamas alive and well—and able to make good on its promises to repeat the horrors of Oct. 7 again and again—are well-meaning and simply sympathetic to the suffering of Palestinians. But the objective of the movement these supposedly well-meaning people support is to strip the Jews of Israel—and Jews everywhere, for that matter—of the ability to defend themselves against Islamists for whom Oct. 7 is just a trailer for what they wish to do to every Jew on this planet.An Israeli survivor of the Holocaust and Oct. 7 says after the recent atrocities, we ‘held our heads high’
Simply put, if you are demonstrating for Hamas’s survival, you are on the side of a group that wishes to repeat the Holocaust. No matter how well-intentioned you may claim to be, that makes you no different from those who viewed the Nazis, who had their own narrative of grievance, with equanimity.
The German people suffered terribly as a result of the war that they launched, yet today, those who claim to speak for humanitarian values believe that there can be no consequences for those who commit or condone (as is true for the overwhelming majority of Palestinians) the mass murder of Jews and that Jews who defend themselves against genocide are the Nazis. Would those who demonstrate against Jewish self-defense apply the same lessons to the Allies who, in order to liberate the Nazi death camps had to kill many people, including civilians?
By the same token, those who wish for universities and other institutions to engage in discriminatory commercial conduct that would divest from anything to do with Israel are not criticizing Israel’s policies or leaders, but supporting a contemporary version of Nazi boycotts of Jews.
It is also just as clear that the leftist/Islamist attack on Israel is also aimed at the West and the United States. This debate over the war against Hamas is not one about whether Israel or its government and military are perfect but about a struggle for the future of the West, much as was true of the war against the German Nazis. The Jews are, as they were during the Holocaust, the canaries in the coal mine, warning humanity of the dangers of tolerating genocidal hate.
As we remember the Shoah, rather than stick to our usual routine of memorialization, it’s time for decent people of all backgrounds and faiths to understand that the war on the Jews didn’t end with the defeat of the Nazis. It continues to this day under new slogans, flags and worse, with many of those who claim to stand for enlightened thought allowing the enablers of Jew-hatred to pose as advocates for human rights and the oppressed. Those lies must not be allowed to stand.
There should be no Holocaust Memorial Day observance without it being made clear that there can be no proper honor given to the Six Million slain by the Nazis without linking that struggle to those against the antisemites of our time. We must not tolerate those who shed crocodile tears for Jews murdered in the past while tolerating or even supporting policies that enable antisemitism in the present, envisioning Israel’s destruction and the continued slaughter of Jews. If we cannot understand that, then invocations to remember what happened or ensure that it is “never again” allowed in this world are nothing more than pointless and counterproductive virtue-signaling.
As for the connection people are drawing between the Oct. 7 attack and the Holocaust, Ben Yosef said that “over the decades, fate brings us all kinds of ups and downs, and that was one of the most difficult low points, but to compare the days of the Holocaust and Oct. 7 — it’s not the same.”
“In the time of the Holocaust, we were spread all over the world and when we were massacred, we couldn’t do anything. Today we are in our own country with our own army. The losses were tremendous, the shock was great — but we held our heads high,” she said.
Ben Yosef took part in a project initiated by the Israel office of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, called “Sharing Memories,” in which influencers upload videos of Holocaust survivors telling their stories. This year Meta Israel is highlighting survivors who were in Israel’s south on Oct. 7. The participants are mostly Israelis, so the videos are mostly in Hebrew, but actor Michael Rapaport produced content in English; they have an aggregate following of over 7.2 million people on Instagram. The project will raise funds for Israeli NGO Latet to provide essential needs to impoverished survivors, and the clips were available to watch on the VOD service of one of Israel’s biggest cable companies, Yes TV, starting on Sunday night.
Hamas murdered several Holocaust survivors on Oct. 7, including some of the 15 elderly people found dead in the street in Sderot, where they were waiting to board a bus to the Dead Sea. One of them was Moshe Ridler, 91, the oldest resident of Kibbutz Holit, who escaped a concentration camp when he was 11 years old.
The eldest of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, Shlomo Mantzur, 86, is a survivor of the Farhud, the 1941 pogrom against Jews in Baghdad, inspired partly by Nazi influence in Iraq. Farhud survivors are recognized as Holocaust survivors under Israeli law.
In the Farhud, Shlomo’s sister, Hadassa Lazar, told a Knesset committee earlier this year, the Iraqis “murdered, raped, tortured babies, kidnapped, decapitated… It was the Kristallnacht of Iraqi Jewry and the world was silent. Shlomo saw things that stayed with him his whole life. We used to think ‘never again’ – it did not occur to us that such things could happen again when we have a sovereign state.”
Some of the other hostages have close relatives who are Holocaust survivors, including Michael Kuperstein, 82, the grandfather of Bar Kuperstein, 22, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, and Tsili Wenkert, 82, whose grandson, Omer Wenkert, was taken from the festival and appeared in a hostage video released in January. Bella Chaim is the grandmother of Yotam Chaim, who was kidnapped to Gaza and accidentally killed by IDF soldiers. Ruth Haran, 89, had seven relatives kidnapped and three murdered; her grandson-in-law Tal is still being held hostage in Gaza and her daughter Sharon, daughter-in-law Shoshan, grandchildren Noam and Adi, and great-grandchildren Neve and Yahel were kidnapped by Hamas and released in November.
Haran, who was born in Romania and spent years fleeing the Nazis, survived the Oct. 7 attack on Kibbutz Be’eri and said that “people who survived the massacre talked about death, murder, women raped and the destruction of our community. The whole trauma of being a Holocaust survivor came back to me…As a Holocaust survivor, I know how to deal with pain, but this time I don’t know how to cope.”
Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Sources of Anti-Semitic Conduct
REVIEW: ‘The Holocaust: An Unfinished History’ by Dan StoneJewish Studies against the Jews
In the past months, we have come to comprehend the evil wrought by an Iran-funded regime that, like the Nazis, placed Jew-hate at the heart of its education and propaganda. We have seen that if there is an heir to the anti-Semitic Nazi regime, it can be found in Hamas, whose society in Gaza produced the ultimate "collective intoxication" of Jew-hate. It was this regime that produced a massacre in which the most Jews since the Holocaust were, to echo Stone’s description of Bogdanovka, "massacred, burned alive, and shot." If there is one brief recording from October 7 that should be played in Holocaust history courses, one which indicates the way in which anti-Semitism can be made manifest not just in Europe but around the world, it is of a Hamas terrorist calling his parents to crow that he had killed "10 Jews"—not "10 Zionists"—with his bare hands. Recent months have also revealed the willingness of all too many on the progressive left to deny, or even defend, the most unspeakable of acts as long as its victims are Jews. What has also become clear is the festering anti-Semitism within woke circles and the intertwining of anti-Semitism with hatred of the Jewish state.
As I finished writing this review, my internet feed was filled with videos of Jews being told to "go back to Poland," a phrase which takes on renewed horror thanks to my reading of Dan Stone’s book. The videos were taken at Columbia University, which, we might remember, welcomed the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad into its midst, revealing the intellectual rot that had laid hold of part of the academy many years before.
The news from Columbia reminds one of the Washington Free Beacon’s report from Stanford, where, already months ago, Jews were told by an instructor to stand in a corner of the classroom as a form of public shaming. I had already been reminded of this article when I read, in The Holocaust, of the first manifestation of Jew-hate in 1930s Germany, in which Jews were "shamed or humiliated on the street, in a tram or at school." Meanwhile, as I typed this sentence, I paused to ponder another photo of an anti-Israel demonstration at George Washington University, not a bastion today of the American right. It features a man holding a sign featuring both an Israeli and Palestinian flag, a sign emblazoned with two words: "Final Solution."
This book has helped me appreciate the dangers facing our society. It is my hope that in a post-October 7 world, Dan Stone can see these dangers too.
For the past several weeks, national and even international attention has been locked on the chaos brought to American college campuses by anti-Israel demonstrations that have become increasingly bold in flouting the authorities, harassing fellow students, and echoing Hamas slogans. Less attention has been paid to the professors who teach those students, yet no small number of professors have gotten involved, sometimes to comfort Jewish students, far more often to join the protesters or to complain about efforts to restore order.Seth Mandel: A History Lesson for the Hillel-Haters
Middle East-studies departments have been well represented, almost exclusively in the anti-Israel camp, but Jewish-studies faculty have largely sat out of the conversation. Some may find this strange. At a time of crisis for the Jewish people, and especially for Jewish university students, it would seem that those who have dedicated their lives to studying Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish religion would have the most to contribute.
Having spent a good chunk of my life involved in academic Jewish studies, I am not especially surprised. The six years I spent studying Jewish history in graduate school were good ones: I had the usual share of ups and downs, but I got an absolutely unbeatable intellectual experience. Likewise, the four subsequent years I spent teaching Jewish history at universities were quite rewarding. I got an inside view of a lot of the problems with academia, but I had some great colleagues and students. I spent almost none of this time engaged in political fights about Israel, or anything else for that matter.
For all that, the problems in my old field have been building for decades, and have now come to a head, clear for all to see. The silence is both the heart of the problem and the least of it: the way too many scholars of Jewish history have conducted themselves since October 7 has confirmed my growing suspicion that something has gone deeply amiss.
There was the November 20 open letter in the New York Review of Books that sixteen Holocaust and anti-Semitism experts wrote in November cautioning Jews against comparing the still-fresh massacre to the Holocaust and Hamas to the Nazis. This was not because nothing should be compared to the Nazis, but because it was the rhetoric of Israelis that should remind people of them, and it was the still-nascent campaign in Gaza that more resembled the Holocaust. There was the way that, on October 13, Raz Segal, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, argued that Israel’s actions in Gaza were “a textbook case of genocide.”
These problems are not limited to the fringes of the field or a few professors. The Association of Jewish Studies, the field’s main professional organization in North America if not in the world, on October 9 sent a message to current and former members expressing “deep sorrow for the loss of life and destruction.” This infuriatingly vague statement—who lost their life, and where, from whom?—received immediate pushback, leading to a second email the next day. Yet even the second likewise refused to name Hamas’s victims.
There is a common thread to these and plenty more episodes. It is, thankfully, not that the worst mass murder of Jews since World War II cannot be condemned—things are not that bad yet in Jewish studies. It is that the attack cannot easily be condemned as an attack on Jews.
Students for Justice in Palestine sparked a debate over the weekend when one of its chapters called for the University of California at Santa Cruz to “cut ties” with Hillel, the university Jewish center. The pretense for this straightforwardly anti-Semitic demand was Hillel’s support for Israel’s continued existence. Pro-Hamas protest groups have been pushing to see how far they can take “Zionism” as a pretense for discriminating against Jews on college campuses, and the reaction this time suggests that the protesters may finally have reached the limit. Even some progressives pushed back.No longer an academic debate: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism
That is not to say that no one in politics or academia supported SJP’s desire to kick the Jewish center off campus. Professors at NYU, Muhlenberg and Florida International were among those in the academy defending SJP, and there were a few left-wing writers or pundits twisting themselves in knots to excuse it. Additionally, the trend is heading in the wrong direction when “ban the Jewish center” becomes a legitimate line of argument within both the progressive world and the academy, the latter having some influence over whether such bans would be carried out.
But what I noticed from all the academics and self-styled “philosophers” arguing over how many anti-Zionists can dance on the head of a pin was this: Not a single one is aware that this has all been tried before, and these exact debates have played out, and the anti-Zionist arguments were so thoroughly demolished that a bit of research could have helped them avoid their very public belly-flop.
In the 1970s, Britain’s National Union of Students became engulfed in a firestorm around the question of banning and boycotting “Zionist” organizations when doing so would also, necessarily, ban Jewish groups. This was the coming together of two trends: first, successful Arab governments’ outreach to young leftist activists in the West, whom they lobbied to embrace anti-Zionism to fill the void left by the winding down of the Vietnam War. Second, the expansion of “anti-fascism” efforts to focus on “anti-racism,” a much more malleable term that opened new avenues for recruitment and fundraising.
In this new worldview, antisemitism rears its head once again by painting us as an all-powerful group with the intent to kill and subject other people to our whims. Indeed, it is the oldest form of hatred. It turns even the passive liberal arts student, who would not imagine donning a Hamas headband, and your friendly humanities professor, who would never march at Charlottesville, into allies of the terrorist movement. It drives them to rationalize, maybe out loud but perhaps only internally, “Well, maybe October 7 was justified.”NYPost Editorial: American academia is deeply infected with antisemitism AND anti-Americanism
American Jews are scarred by this institutional failure. Higher education has long been our community’s path to the middle class and high-achieving professions. In recognition of the university’s role, American Jews contributed billions to these institutions and sent generations of our children to be molded there. Jewish students, from the Freedom Summer participants of the 1960s to the campus labor activists of the recent past, spent an inordinate amount of time building coalitions with various groups and defending the rights of the marginalized.
Yet our long history is repaid by a new generation that “knows not Joseph.” American universities ought to be guardians of our country’s free institutions and fierce defenders of the bedrock values of pluralism and civic conversation. These institutions, instead, are now incubators for the most noxious forms of antisemitism.
Let me be very clear. When Jews who are not connected to the IDF – or even to Israel – are harmed in protest of the actions of the Israeli government or military, when a synagogue in America has a Molotov cocktail thrown at it, and when non-Israeli Jewish institutions are targeted, we know this is prima facie antisemitism, which wipes away any doubts about the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Those who advocate for the destruction of Jews anywhere, rejoice at the harm done to Jews everywhere.
This is no longer an academic debate. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism, full stop. And those who permit anti-Zionists to justify harming Jews and enable the violence against the Jewish people to continue are also antisemitic.
Minouche Shafik certainly ought to go as president of Columbia, along with all her peers across academia who’ve utterly bungled their “tentifada” occupations, but America’s campus rot runs far deeper.Boycotting Israel Is an Attack on Science
Note the CCNY staff who pulled a sympathy sickout after City College had its encampment cleared, and the Columbia and NYU profs who formed human chains in defense of the students (and outsiders) grossly violating the schools’ rules.
And, as Charlie Gasparino flags, the way elite colleges have taken vast overseas donations in tacit exchange for shaping their faculties and curricula in opposition to Israel (and America).
Heck, notice that Pritzkers serve on the boards of both Columbia and Harvard — even as the Pritzker family foundation funds multiple groups supporting the “pro-Palestinian protests.”
Mayor Adams is certainly right to stress the role of “outside agitators” in fanning the campus flames, but plenty of “agitators” are deep on the inside, too.
Don’t relax as a few more heads roll in coming days: Detoxifying these institutions will take years.
I'm a professor who leads a research lab in San Francisco that develops medicines to treat viruses and cancers.RNC and Trump release video contrasting GOP and Biden on antisemitism
During a recent visit to Israel, academic deans showed me critiques of papers submitted to journals that assailed Israel's military actions instead of weighing the article's scientific merits.
At a cancer research seminar in Barcelona, colleagues grilled an Israeli professor not about his findings but about Israel's war against Hamas.
Sidelining scientists and their innovations is everyone's loss. Israel has contributed hundreds of innovations to the world.
The country's scientists are credited with inventing drip irrigation (alleviating global-food crises), reverse osmosis (enabling desalinization for drinking water), and the leading cancer therapy for resistant lymphoma (which has treated more than 27,000 patients in the U.S. alone).
The Republican National Committee, former President Donald Trump‘s campaign, and the Republican Jewish Coalition released a new video Monday comparing Trump and President Joe Biden‘s handling of rising antisemitism across the nation.David Singer: UN lobbies to recognize fictitious State of Palestine
The video, first shared with the Washington Examiner, comes on the same day as Holocaust Remembrance Day and one day before the seven-month anniversary of the Oct. 7 surprise Hamas attack against Israel, which killed over 1,200 people.
“Joe Biden’s weakness is on display for all the world to see as he refuses to condemn the antisemitic violence on college campuses and continues to backtrack on his support for Israel,” RNC chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement. “As chaos envelopes the world, this is no time for ambiguity — we need President Donald J. Trump back in office to restore order, support our critical ally, Israel, and bring peace through strength once more.”
The nearly 90-second video directly references the pro-Palestinian college protests that have captured national attention. Protesters are pushing for universities to divest from Israel.
But at times, the encampments that have been set up on campuses across the nation have led to violent encounters with law enforcement.
“I understand their passion,” and “they have a point,” Biden says in the video as clips are shown of reporters questioning his administration’s response to the protests.
In contrast, Trump is shown visiting the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, in 2017 with then-first lady Melania Trump and pledging to confront antisemitism. The historic visit was the first time a U.S. president had visited the Old City of Jerusalem.
“When I get back into office, I will put every single university and college president on notice. The American taxpayer will not subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers on American soil,” Trump says in the video. “I will defend our friend and ally, the state of Israel, like nobody has ever defended it before.”
The 2022 Saudi-based Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution calls for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the 'West Bank' into one territorial entity to be governed by the Hashemites and called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine” with its capitol in Amman – not Jerusalem.Hamas Apologists Rally To Save Jamaal Bowman's Campaign
Its author is an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Implementing this proposal would see:
- Palestinians in the 'West Bank', Gaza and stateless refugees getting full citizenship in the merged Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with all the elements of sovereignty applicable to those Territories that belonging to a fully recognized state in the UN entail.
- UNSCR 2334 consigned to the diplomatic graveyard.
Incredibly – neither Guterres nor Wennesland has brought this alternative two-state solution to the General Assembly or Security Council for deliberation and consideration in the 21 months since its publication.
Implementing this alternative two-state solution:
· Israel and
· The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine
is a realistically-achievable solution based on fact – not fiction.
However galling it might be for Guterres and Wennesland to see UNSCR 2334 shredded – the current situation demands a clean sweep of UN policies to date and the serious consideration of implementing the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution as the answer to preventing further conflict.
The Bureau should be investigating and evaluating the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine in Israel-Jordan negotiations conducted in good faith – not expending its time and resources pursuing the recognition of a fictitious State of Palestine – which will do nothing to end the current conflict.
Is the penny finally starting to drop? That is the million-dollar question.
Progressive groups that routinely downplay Hamas's terrorism are seeking to give Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D., N.Y.) embattled primary campaign a final push across the finish line, as polls show him trailing his pro-Israel primary challenger.Belgian PM says he is rallying EU countries to impose trade sanctions on Israel
Anti-Israel groups, including RootsAction, the Working Families Party, and IfNotNow, joined forces with Justice Democrats—the far-left group aligned with the "Squad"—to help raise funds for Bowman.
"Our progressive leaders are fighting for us against corporate interests who seek to keep power in the hands of the wealthy few. That's why they're all-in on @JamaalBowmanNY and @CoriBush: because the voices of a former school principal & nurse are megaphones for working families," Justice Democrats wrote in a post on Wednesday.
"Stay tuned for more events, fundraisers, and ways to plug in this summer—to #ProtectTheSquad and protect our democracy nationwide. Chip in now to @CoriBush and @JamaalBowmanNY," the group added.
RootsAction, a progressive group representing the "multiracial working class," blamed Israel for Hamas's Oct. 7 attack in a statement one day following the massacre, citing "cruel Israeli occupation and expansionism" as the "root" of the violence. The group added that it expects similar cycles of terror to repeat unless the "apartheid" ends.
"The root of today's violence is the oppression and abuses suffered daily by Palestinian people as a whole under decades of cruel Israeli occupation and expansionism. Leading human rights groups … have concluded that Israel's occupation policies amount to a form of apartheid," the group wrote in a post. "Until Israel's military occupation is ended, these cycles of terror and war and trauma will repeat."
IfNotNow, an anti-Israel group working to "end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system," wrote in a 2020 post that Hamas's being "directly and fully responsible for the crisis in Gaza" is a "myth." The group admitted that Hamas "plays a role" but later contended that Israel perpetuates the crisis with a "blockade" that is "hindering the growth of Gaza's economy, infrastructure, and institutions."
Belgium is trying to recruit other European countries to impose new trade sanctions on Israel, according to statements made Monday by its political leadership.FDD: Turkey’s Suspension of Trade With Israel Cuts off Its Nose to Spite Its Face
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in an interview with Het Laatste Nieuws that he was pushing for the European Union to impose a ban on products made in settlements. He singled out dates, olive oil and wine.
“Can we now simply continue with Israel as a trading partner? I don’t think so,” said De Croo, who earlier this year resisted calls by the opposition to push sanctions on Israel.
“Since then, there have been 35,000 deaths, including 10,000 children,” he explained, referring to the unverified death toll published by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
“And it is not the main reason, but we Europeans will bear the consequences. In ten years they’re going to say, ‘You watched and took no action.'”
De Croo also cited the danger of regional escalation as the result of the Gaza war.
He said that he has been working with other European countries “for weeks” on sanctions, and has asked European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to look into whether Israel violated its association agreement with the EU.
Erdogan may wish not only to become Hamas’s main champion but also to assume leadership of the rejectionist bloc of vocal anti-Israel states. It was in this context that, on May 1, 2024, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced that Turkey would join South Africa’s genocide complaint against Israel in the International Court of Justice.Johannesburg to host ‘global’ anti-Israel conference
Congress must take concrete measures to deter Turkey and to prevent other states from following its lead by expanding a hypocritical boycott that gives sustenance to terrorists. Already, several U.S. congressmen have demanded the U.S. Department of State move to prevent further Turkish efforts to inflame the Gaza conflict. Following Ankara’s boycott announcement, U.S. lawmakers began to inquire about the possibility of imposing sanctions against Turkey to enforce U.S. anti-boycott laws.
Neither the Biden administration nor Congress should be passive in the face of Turkey’s challenge to Middle Eastern peace and the liberal world order. Instead, leaders from both parties should employ various tools to dissuade Erdogan from fueling the fire. To that end:
Congress could recommend applying Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against Erdogan’s associates for systemic corruption.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) could target Turkish banks under anti-money laundering authorities previously applied to Turkey’s sanctions evasion on behalf of Iran.
The Treasury could also impose sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) if Turkey operationalizes the S-400 air defense system it purchased from Russia.
The U.S. Department of State could also stall cooperation on energy projects that Erdogan values.
Lastly, the Biden administration could delay delivery of the 70 F-16 fighters and modernization kits until Ankara changes its behavior.
The first “Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine” will be held at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg on May 10-12.Britain’s ‘liberal imam’ says politicians should be ‘called out’ for having Jewish family members
The conference is billed as bringing together an international host of anti-Israel activists “towards a global movement to dismantle Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid.”
According to the “concept note” posted to the event website, “The unprecedented collective efforts of the global solidarity movement have been inspiring. Yet, we have not reached the point where we can stop the U.S.-Israeli genocidal war, achieve justice for the indigenous people of Palestine, and dismantle Israel’s regime of Zionist occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, as was done to the apartheid regime in South Africa.”
South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor is scheduled to open the event. Pandor has drawn criticism from the South African Jewish community for repeated incitement against Israel as well as threats to arrest South Africans who have served with the Israel Defense Forces should they return to the country.
The speakers’ schedule comprises a who’s who of the world’s most notorious anti-Israel antagonists, including Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative party and a BDS leader; Zaher Birawi, a senior Hamas official living in the United Kingdom; and Ali Abunimah, founder of the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website.
The founder of a charity that promotes a more tolerant and modernised Islam for British Muslims has compared Zionists to Nazis and stated that politicians should be “called out” for having Jewish family members.Furore over scrapping of Israel event at Statale Uni
Taj Hargey, a historian and imam who has previously been described as “Britain’s liberal imam”, was speaking to the Yorkshire Post about the specific issues Muslim voters have.
He said during the interview there had been an “awakening” among Muslims in recent months who now understand the “distinction between Germans and Nazis,” adding, “Not all Germans were Nazis. And similarly, not all Jews are Zionists.”
Hargey, who leads the Oxford Institute for British Islam (OIBI), added it is “important that prominent British politicians” who “blindly support Israel” should be “identified” if they have family links to the Jewish State.
Hargey went on to talk about Sir Keir Starmer having close family who are Jewish, saying he should be “called out on this.”
“And so that’s part of the reason why he’s pussyfooting on this whole issue,” he added.
Hargey also accused both former Home Secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman of being “married to a Zionist.”
Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Hargey asked how politicians can “be non-partisan and unbiased if they do not declare their personal connections to Zionism and Israel?
“Is this not the case when the public are frequently reminded directly or indirectly about the faith of Muslim leaders”, Hargey said using London mayor Sadiq Khan, politicians Humza Yousaf and Scottish Labour Party leader Anas Sarwar as examples.
A furore has erupted after a convention on Israel scheduled to take place at Milan's Statale University on May 7, seven months after Hamas's October 7 attacks, was scrapped following a police warning about the danger of violent incidents.Eli Tsives Interview - StandWithUs TV
"We couldn't do otherwise," Alessandro Litta Modignani of the 'Pro Israele' association, which organized the event with Savona's Italia-Israele association, told ANSA.
"The police told us that the event had been reclassified from high risk to extremely high risk and said it was necessary to close the university that afternoon for the students' safety as members of (left-wing) 'social centres' (squats) from all over northern Italy were set to come.
"We must guarantee the safety of all participants and avoid attacks on the police too.
"So, faced with a clear threat of violence, we could not do anything else.
"And this is a defeat for democracy".
The university stressed that Dean Elio Franzini had decided to turn the convention into an online event and "certainly not cancel it" to minimize security risks but added that the organizers had not gotten back about this proposal.
The row comes in the wake of series of protests and occupations at Italian universities against institutions having relations with Israeli ones and calls for boycotts amid the war in Gaza, which have led Italy's Jewish community to sound the alarm about anti-Semitism in the world of higher education.
Hims & Hers CEO walks back supporting campus protests after company stocks tank
The CEO of Hims & Hers, a telehealth pharmaceutical company, has issued a new statement on the campus protests happening across the country, after its initial support for them caused the company’s stocks to plummet.Ruthie Blum: ‘Al Jazeera’ plays the free-speech card
Andrew Dudum had initially encouraged protesters on campus to continue their protests, stating that many companies are “eager to hire you” and included a link to apply at his company. The post sparked controversy online, with Hims & Hers’s stock going down by a noticeable amount from over $13.12 per share on Wednesday to $11.35 per share by Sunday evening.
Dudum said on social media that the past several days had been “a disheartening reflection” on how divisive the current landscape is and clarified how he had not been condoning antisemitism or acts of violence occurring at the protests.
“Every student deserves to feel safe without fear of harm or being targeted for who they are,” Dudum wrote on X. “I am deeply saddened that my support for peaceful protest has been interpreted by some as encouraging violence, intimidation, or bigotry of any kind.”
Dudum also reiterated his support for those demonstrating “in peaceful protest,” stressing how free speech is important in the United States. He added that there is more justice in the present times due to how students in the past “used their voices to force change.”
His support for the protesters on college campuses was in stark contrast to statements made by other billionaires and CEOs, including Bill Ackman, who criticized Rutgers University for conceding to multiple demands from its protesters. Ackman warned that schools rewarding protesters who break the rules will only get more protests in the future, along with “more extreme rule violations.”
There’s no question that the step was warranted. Back in February, Israel Defense Forces Arabic-language spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee revealed documents showing that Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Washah was a “prominent commander” in Hamas’s anti-tank missile unit who, in late 2022, began R&D work for its aerial array.BBC presenter appears to side with Hamas during interview
Similar findings emerged about additional reporters and videographers doubling as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. The evidence is so extensive that even Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara—who initially objected to the bill on the grounds that it would give the communications minister excessive power over the press—greenlit a tweaked version.
Judging by Baharav-Miara’s tendency to hinder the government she’s supposed to counsel and defend, her decision to allow the regulations indicates just how egregious Al Jazeera’s behavior has been. And the only reason that it’s taken this long to pass and implement the legislation is the delicate nature of Jerusalem’s relations with Doha.
Qatar, home since 2016 to Hamas “political leader” Ismail Haniyeh, inserted itself as a mediator in the effort to free the hostages held in Gaza by his counterpart in the Strip, Yahya Sinwar. But since the agreement in November that led to the release of mostly women and children from Hamas’s tunnel-dungeons, no progress has been made.
Of course, that’s because Israel refuses to retreat from Gaza and leave Sinwar in control. So, none of the “negotiations” brokered by the United States, Egypt and Al Jazeera’s royal patron is of any help to the 132 remaining captives.
Waiting any longer to put a muzzle on Qatar’s antisemitic mouthpiece was therefore pointless. Taking the step on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day was especially fitting, however; even more so given Hamas’s reaction.
“The decision of the criminal [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his Nazi government to close the Al Jazeera office and prevent it from working and reporting,” the terrorist group said in a statement, “is a blatant violation of freedom of the press and an oppressive and retaliatory measure against Al Jazeera’s professional role in exposing the occupation’s crimes and violations committed by its criminal Nazi army and its terrorist settlers against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.”
Israel rests its case.
In an interview on the BBC on Monday, the host of the British news channel appeared to agree with an activist’s false claim that the Jewish state was committing atrocities in the war in the Gaza Strip.BBC Arabic forced to correct its output 80 times in five months of war
Tadhg Enright was interviewing Omar Shakir, the regional director of Human Rights Watch, on Israel’s decision to shut down the pro-Hamas Qatari-based channel Al-Jazeera‘s operations in the country.
When asked by Enright for his reaction, Shakir did not mince words. “This is an assault on the freedom of the press,” he stated. “Al-Jazeera is a critical source of information that many Palestinians and others in the region rely upon. Instead of trying to muzzle reporting on atrocities, the Israeli government should stop committing them.”
Enright then said, “Yeah, indeed,” presumably agreeing with the claim that Israel was carrying out atrocities. He then went on to ask Shakir, “I wonder what their claim, the Israeli government’s claim is that Al Jazeera has become a mouthpiece for Hamas.”
The Qatar-based network has vocally denied the charges that it has been pro-Hamas, but in recent weeks it has consistently sided with the terrorist group’s false claims of mass killings, including in cases where it was clear Hamas was using bodies as props and falsifying numbers.
This was the case even after Israel showed those claims to be false, as in the case of an aid truck being attacked by a mob, which caused deaths when people trampled on each other without Israel’s involvement, and the slander against Israel of supposedly creating mass graves in a hospital, where it turned out to be Hamas’s own creation.
The BBC was forced to correct its Arabic channel’s coverage of the Gaza conflict every other day on average during the first five months of the war.NPR’s Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel Narrative Part I Citations and Interviewees
BBC Arabic, whose output Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, has described as “something we should be very proud of”, made 80 corrections in the five months after the Oct 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
The corrections followed a string of complaints about the channel’s news coverage of the conflict by the Campaign for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera), which lobbies for “accurate and balanced” coverage of Israel.
Of the 80 corrections made, 34 concerned BBC Arabic referring to Jewish communities inside Israel’s internationally recognized territory as “settlements”, which happened 30 times, and to their residents as “settlers” – four times.
Camera said it flagged this issue as early as the afternoon of Oct 7, but that BBC Arabic continued using the term “settlers” and “settlements” widely for the following five months, including in reference to Metula, which was established in 1896, with some of its first Jewish families having lived in the area for centuries.
BBC Arabic also corrected its description of Hamas and Hezbollah – both of which are proscribed terrorist groups under UK law – as “the Resistance” on three occasions, and corrected references to attacks which targeted and killed civilians as “resistance operations” on two more occasions.
During a recent fundraiser at one of NPR’s local stations, staff implored listeners to contribute generously to compensate for the 40% loss in revenue they said the network had suffered. The reason given for the significant loss was that the old economics of corporate underwriting of NPR programming is no longer sustainable, with businesses turning to social media for advertising and publicity.NPR’s Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel Narrative Part II Producer
In fact, NPR’s loss of revenue also correlates with its loss of credibility as an objective news provider. Despite the lip service paid by NPR editors to the notion that their news gathering operation is even-handed and impartial, listeners are increasingly recognizing that the network is less committed to objectively and honestly informing the public about world events than it is to shaping public perception with a radical and distorted world view. When NPR editor Uri Berliner published a maverick critique of his network’s reporting to which he attributed the loss of “America’s trust,” he pointed to the extent to which progressive politics informs NPR’s reporting. While he did not explore NPR’s coverage of the Hamas-Israel war, that reporting clearly demonstrates the extent to which the public radio network has gone off the rails.
Downplaying Antisemitic Activities at Columbia University
NPR AGENDA: Regarding the antisemitic, pro-Hamas activity at Columbia University that created an intolerable atmosphere for Jewish students and which caused Jewish students to flee campus, NPR did its best to downplay the anti-Jewish, extremist and unlawful nature of the protests.
PARTISAN GUEST: Host Michael Martin enlisted radical Marxist, anti-Israel activist Eleanor Stein — introduced as a law and human rights professor who as a student in the 1960s protested the Vietnam War —to promote the notion that the Columbia University protests were righteous in nature and not disruptive . (This came shortly before protesters broke windows and illegally occupied Columbia buildings.)
WHAT NPR CONCEALED: The audience was not told of Stein’s radical background and activities— a red diaper baby, Stein was notorious as a Marxist revolutionary and leader in the Weather Underground that the FBI classified as a domestic terror organization. Nor were listeners told that Stein is a longtime anti-Israel activist who supports and teams up with Israel haters who demonize the Jewish state (see, for example, here, here, here and here). And they were not informed that Stein had recently used her pulpit as a climate activist to accuse Israel of genocide, to call for a unilateral ceasefire on Israel’s part and to attack the U.S. for supporting Israel’s war of defense against Hamas terrorists, with the nonsensical claim that Israel’s military actions, more than anything else in the word, was responsible for a worsening climate crisis.
NPR MESSAGE: Instead, host Michael Martin prodded the anti-Israel activist with leading questions that stood truth on its head by portraying the protests at Columbia University as peaceful in nature and by suggesting that reports of anti-Jewish hostility were merely false, politically motivated allegations:
Since October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist organization orchestrated an invasion of Israel’s borders to carry out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas supporters have been pushing a narrative aimed at turning the Western world against Israel. With pressure on Israel to cease its battle against the terrorist group, Hamas would be free to achieve its declared goal of annihilating the Jewish state.BBC World Service radio platforms a notorious antisemite
NPR’s contribution is to platform pro-Hamas and anti-Israel partisans, presented as objective authorities and witnesses, to echo and lend credence to Hamas’ false, self-preserving narrative, as shown in Part I of this series of two articles.
As if platforming partisan guests introduced as neutral authorities was not bad enough, NPR has been increasingly relying on photojournalists and fixers from Gaza – who are given authority as NPR producers – to deliver stories about the war. They are presumably instrumental in selecting stories and interviewees to highlight in Gaza.
Unlike the claims and accounts attributed to Israeli authorities and military officials that are treated skeptically (see Part I), NPR’s Gazan producers are granted an NPR imprimatur.
One such Gazan contributor is Omar el Qattaa, first cited as a “local photojournalist” in Gaza, then credited as an “NPR photographer,” “NPR producer,” and contributing reporter. Aside from the broadcasts to which he contributed, his name also bylines several articles on NPR’s website.
Just over five and a half years ago the BBC programme ‘Hardtalk’ conducted an interview with Mohamad during which he made blatantly antisemitic remarks.BBC NEWS COVERAGE OF TERRORISM IN ISRAEL – APRIL 2024
“Malaysia’s avowedly anti-Semitic prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has repeated his claim from the 1970s that Jews are “hook-nosed” and claimed that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust wasn’t six million.
“They are hook-nosed,” he insisted in a BBC interview during a visit to the United Kingdom, after host Zeinab Badawi asked him why he used such language, according to Reuters.
When she noted that many viewers would find his remark offensive, he said: “Many people called the Malays fat-nosed. We didn’t object, we didn’t go to war for that.” […]
In his 1970 book “The Malay Dilemma,” Mahathir wrote that “the Jews are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively,” relying on two famous anti-Semitic stereotypes that were used by Nazi Germany to dehumanize Jews.
Mahathir also claimed that the consensus among historians that some 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust was false, putting the number at 4 million.”
Whether or not the BBC has already forgotten its own previous experience of Mohamad’s unabashed antisemitism, there is no justification for this worldwide platforming – and mainstreaming – of a prime example of what Tim Davie describes as “the noisiest and most extreme voices” under the guise of commentary which has no purpose but to spread disinformation concerning “genocide” and casualty ratios.
Tim Davie’s claim that the BBC World Service counters efforts by “hostile states” to promote “disinformation and disruption” will continue to ring hollow as long as that branch of the corporation panders to notorious racists and atrocity deniers airbrushed as supposedly respectable “elder statesmen”.
The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks during April 2024 shows that throughout the month a total of 513 incidents took place in Judea & Samaria, Jerusalem and within the ‘green line’. The agency recorded 72 attacks with petrol bombs, 55 attacks using pipe bombs, one attack using an IED, 321 incidents of rock throwing, 23 shooting attacks, 32 arson attacks, two vehicular attacks and six stabbing attacks.The Herald removes antisemitic graphic
64 attacks were thwarted throughout the month and 262 terror related arrests were made.
In addition, 113 missiles were launched into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip and 744 missiles were launched from Lebanon or Syria throughout April, including on Passover eve. (The ISA report does not include casualties from attacks related to Operation Swords of Iron.)
One person was murdered and 28 were injured in attacks in Judea & Samaria, Jerusalem and inside the ‘green line’ during April.
LBC recently announced that presenter Sangita Myska – formerly of BBC – would be leaving her show on the talk radio station. The announcement came two weeks after a heated interview she had with Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman concerning Iran’s attack against Israel on April 15.Will a Gaza Journalist Who Cited Hitler, Invaded Israel on Oct. 7, Win Pulitzer?
While there’s been idle speculation over whether Myska’s departure was somehow connected to that interview, neither the presenter nor LBC’s parent company, Global Media, have commented on the matter. Moreover, if you watch the full nine minute exchange between Myska and Hyman, you’ll see that there was nothing particularly unusual about it in comparison with other Israel-Gaza related interviews on LBC. If LBC or their parent company was intolerant of presenters who strongly challenged Israel, you’d think that James O’Brien, whose hatred for the the Jewish state is clear to anyone paying attention, would have been axed long ago.
However, despite the dearth of evidence regarding the reasons for Myska’s removal, The Herald (of Scotland) went full-on conspiracy theory over the row.
On May 2, they published an article by Alasdair Ferguson titled “Sangita Myska to leave LBC amid speculation of Israel’s involvement”, which includes absolutely zero evidence of “Israel’s involvement” – as you can see by reading the piece. In fact, the only sentence in the entire article which mentions such accusations is this one.
On Yom HaShoah, the Pulitzer Prize Board will potentially be awarding journalism’s top award to a Gazan photographer who cited Hitler and infiltrated into Israel during Hamas’ genocidal massacre on October 7.
The New York Times and its freelance photojournalist Yousef Masoud are predicted to be announced as Pulitzer Prize winners tomorrow, May 6, Tablet Magazine revealed last week, despite HonestReporting’s exposure of Masoud’s illegal infiltration and a Facebook post discovered by Tablet in which he cited Hitler.
So as Jews mourn the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, honoring Masoud would mean turning a blind eye to both Nazi and Hamas atrocities for the sake of industry prizes.
Hitler and Palestinians
Masoud’s now-deleted Facebook post from March 2013 mentioned Hitler and Palestinian “soldiers” as allies.
According to Tablet Magazine, his post read in Arabic: “Hitler said, give me a Palestinian soldier and a German weapon, and I will make Europe crawl on its fingertips,” citing an unconfirmed quote attributed to the man responsible for the mass annihilation of European Jewry.
The New York Times told Tablet Magazine that “editors were not previously aware of’’ the Facebook post and “may have more to say on it soon.”
But they were aware of the fact that Masoud had been present when Hamas tried to annihilate Jews again on October 7.
As revealed by HonestReporting last November, Masoud (among other freelancers) was present early enough at the breached Israel-Gaza border to capture an image of a still-smoldering Israeli tank for the Associated Press.
Related Reading: Broken Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions
But his illegal infiltration did not prevent The New York Times from using his work inside Gaza throughout the Israel-Hamas war, and submitting it to the prestigious George Polk Awards — a Pulitzer precursor which he won last February.
"Biased and uncomfortable" @JeremyBenAmi https://t.co/EFri2h6Cbg
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) May 6, 2024
How can @nytimes try to deny the role of outside agitators in anti-Israel campus protests while at the same time citing an "activist group's" call for outside help?
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 5, 2024
Note to NYT: Within Our Lifetime is a radical anti-Israel hate org that lauds terrorists.https://t.co/XkV3EeNRIa pic.twitter.com/RjgOLL1Y3B
Absolute garbage. 2 months of Hamas rejecting increasingly generous offers. Israel accepted every element Hamas wanted except they then demanded a complete withdrawal & end to the war so Hamas can resize power.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 6, 2024
That isn’t a formula for peace but just another war down the line. https://t.co/faQzBlxPh6
PMW: When the victim of the Nazis is accused of being worse than Nazis
While Israel today commemorates the 6 million victims of the Nazis in the Holocaust, it is at the same time constantly confronted with libels by PA leaders and officials claiming Israel is “acting like the Nazis” and worse. These lies have been intensified since Hamas launched the current war against Israel with its attack and massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.Top PA official: The Jew is not “a victim” but “a criminal, a terrorist
The official PA daily stated that Israel’s defense war against Hamas “has exceeded all the German Nazi and Italian Fascist crimes of annihilation”:
“The Zionist-American war (i.e., the 2023 Gaza war; see note below) is targeting the annihilation of the Palestinian people or exiling it from the land of Ribat (i.e., religious conflict over land claimed to be Islamic)… and eliminating its national cause in order to spread darkness, wars, terror, and religious conflicts… Will the [Arab] brothers, the free world, and the supporters of peace stop the barbaric and insane war of annihilation that has exceeded all the German Nazi and Italian Fascist crimes of annihilation known to history?”
[Column by regular columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 12, 2024]
Two months into the war, top PA official Jibril Rajoub stated that Jews are not “victims” but “criminal[s], terrorist[s], and a distorted form of the fascism and Nazism of the last century” and that the West has been “deceived” about this. He added that the war in Gaza is part of “the defense that the Palestinian people has waged and is waging for 75 years” – in other words, since Israel’s establishment:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The Americans, Europeans, and others were deceived to think that the Jew is a victim. The truth is that he is a criminal, a terrorist, and a distorted form of the fascism and Nazism of the last century.”
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Dec. 4, 2023]
Talking about the PA’s proposed terrorists-for-hostages exchange, which the Palestinians envision as part of the negotiations with Israel to free the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, Jibril Rajoub has also claimed that living conditions in Israeli prisons “are unprecedented anywhere but [in] the Nazi camps of the 1940s”:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “This [prisoner exchange] will be an opportunity, and the international community must adopt this position – closing the issue of imprisonment; closing the issue of abductions (i.e., arrest of terrorists), closing the issue of the massacre being committed in Israeli prisons through living conditions that are unprecedented anywhere but the Nazi camps of the 1940s and its barbaric and fascist treatment, etc.”
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, April 26, 2024]
Libel: “The Israelis are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them”
PMW: Is Fatah promoting Jihadi tourism to Jerusalem?
In February, Palestinian Media Watch reported about how the PA praised American soldier Aaron Bushnell for potentially sparking a movement in which people around the world would move from mere protests to actions of self-sacrifice against Israel. A writer for the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida even went so far as to say that Palestinian-styled self-sacrifice, one of the PA euphemisms for suicidal attacks, serves as an example for all humanity.
Last week, a 34-year-old Turkish imam visiting Israel took a page from the PA attack playbook when he stabbed and wounded an Israeli border policeman near Herod’s gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Turkish tourist’s attack was labeled by Fatah’s spokesman as a “self-sacrificing operation,” just as it did for Bushnell’s self-immolation.
Fatah Spokesman in Jerusalem Ma'arouf Al-Rifai: “In April there was one Martyr [in Jerusalem], namely Turkish tourist [Hassan Saklana] (i.e., terrorist) who ascended to Heaven while carrying out a self-sacrificing operation in the Old City of Jerusalem.”
[Official PA TV, May 2, 2024]
Fatah Official Abbas Zaki: We Ask Allah that Iran Obtains a Nuclear Bomb so that It Is Guaranteed to Always Be Victorious #Palestinians #Iran #Fatah pic.twitter.com/zweaROuFpZ
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 5, 2024
📢"Palestinian girl hugs her mother's grave who was killed by Israel!"
— GAZAWOOD - the PALLYWOOD saga 🇮🇱 VS 🇵🇸 (@GAZAWOOD1) May 4, 2024
(If you have room left in the "Palestinian lies notebook", add this one there as well. If not, buy a new notebook, there are several thousand such videos on the way).
---@djjude_subaya pic.twitter.com/tJuJDel1dZ
PreOccupiedTerritory: New Smuggling Shipment To Hamas Brings Crucial Dolls, Stuffed Toys For Staged Photos (satire)
A pause in the fighting has allowed the Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip to bring in, via tunnels under the Egyptian border, critical supplies for the war effort against Israel, prominent among them eight dozen plush figures and similar items to be posed just so among rubble and then photographed, an organization spokesman disclosed today.
Hamas Assistant Directorate Chief Fawzi Balsaq thanked all those involved in getting the essential war materiel. “First we must thank our friends in Tehran,” he began. “Our generous sponsors in the IRGC [the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which arms, trains and funs Iranian proxy militias] understand the central role these materials play in the endeavor to destroy the usurping Zionist entity.”
“We must also mention the tireless efforts of those who do the actual smuggling, and the children who gave their lives to dig the tunnels,” he continued. “The poetry of the children’s toys, which will tug at the heartstrings of gullible westerners and get them to pressure the enemy into giving up, leaving us to rebuild and rearm to kill them again and again, all made possible by children who died or got permanently injured to dig the tunnels – the poetry escapes no one.”
The shipment also included replenishments for Gaza’s inventories of fake blood, which has proved invaluable in the production of atrocity videos.
In a meeting with Hajj officials and a group of Iranians who will attend this year’s ceremonies, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that this year’s Hajj is political, implying that Iranians should chant slogans against Israel and the US.
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) May 6, 2024
Referring to the war in Gaza Khamenei added that “the brutal attacks by the Zionist rabid dogs and the vampiric Western civilization” and “the oppression and resistance of the Muslim people of Gaza” will be marked in history. Without the US help, Israel would not dare to act like…
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) May 6, 2024
The first-ever Arab-Israeli delegation to visit Auschwitz
Auschwitz: The Common Journey - Documentary film by Daniel Gitman Tadevosyan with Yoseph Haddad
Watch the special documentary of the emotional journey of dozens of Arab Israelis to Poland to learn about the Holocaust.
"My friend, Anne Frank"- a powerful and unforgettable book
Although I read the book My Friend Anne Frank, by Hannah Pick Gosdar (Penguin, Random House, 305 pp.) several months ago, I put off writing about it until just before Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. It seemed to me a good idea to post a review of this gripping book during the period when many people look for writHundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor on Yom Hashoah
zings on the Holocaust.
But something else happened. In the first few chapters, Hannah (or Hanneli) lives through pre-war events that European Jewry was unable to imagine, let alone predict. And, as fate would have it, I could not have predicted or imagined that the first part of the book would become especially chilling in the light of its similarity to what is happening today to Jews at US universities – and to Jews the world over.
I had a haunting déjà vu feeling while reading the beginning. It was suddenly more disturbing than before to read the vivid descriptions of a carefree childhood in a cultured Berlin home and in beautiful Amsterdam (the city to which Hannah’s loving parents moved, thinking they would be out of reach of the Nazis), then of how Jewish feelings of security changed to fear in the riots preceding the actual roundups of Jews, and how Hannah’s gentile friends ignored her while she faced taunts and hatred on the streets.
A comparison to the pro-Hamas riots at American universities today, and to the Jews harassed, hurt and vilified in the goldene medina cannot be avoided. Hanneli’s descriptions of Jew-hatred, widespread indifference to antisemitism and blatant support for killing Jews in the 1930s have come back to life in full force.
My chaotic feelings were put into order when I watched a zoom lecture in Hebrew on the Holocaust by Rabbi Benny Kalmanson, Rosh Yeshiva at Otniel, an authority on the Shoah and a member of Yad Vashem's Pedagogical Council of the School for Holocaust Education. The much-beloved rabbi is also the father of Elchanan Hy”d who rushed south and saved at least 100 of Be’eri’s residents on October 7th before being shot and killed by a Hamas terrorist.
Hundreds gathered in Haifa during Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) on Monday to attend the funeral of a Holocaust survivor who died the previous night.Israeli FM compares Hamas to Nazis on Yom Hashoah
Esther Greizer, 95, a native of Hungary who survived the Nazi genocide, did not have any immediate family to mourn her passing. A social media message went out to the community and crowds descended on the cemetery for her burial.
Greizer’s great-nephew Yochai Gringlick wrote on Facebook that she was unable to bear children because of “medical” experiments performed on her at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
“It didn’t prevent Esti from marrying the late Gershon and living a happy life full of love and giving,” Gringlick wrote. “Because she didn’t have children, we were like grandchildren to her, even though we were her sister’s great-grandchildren.”
Gringlick said that there would not be a shiva, the traditional seven days of mourning in Judaism for immediate family members of the deceased.
“She doesn’t have children and her brothers are all already dead. There will only be a funeral,” he wrote.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is an annual day of observance in Israel to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Monday compared Hamas to the Nazis.
“Our just war in Gaza continues, with the exact same goals: the release of all hostages and the defeat of Hamas,” tweeted Katz on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Yesterday, we received a reminder from the Nazi terrorist organization Hamas, firing from a civilian population near the Rafah Crossing towards the Kerem Shalom Crossing, intended for humanitarian aid.”
Katz went on to state that Israel had agreed to “significant concessions” in hostage talks with Hamas, but that the terror group had “repeatedly refused.”
“Everyone understands that [Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya] Sinwar has no intention of releasing all hostages, even in exchange for everything. He believes that the world will pressure Israel to stop the war unconditionally, and he will be able to continue to control Gaza—with hostages as bargaining chips and with the ability to continue the war of attrition against Israel and plan the next attack.
“Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the slogan ‘Never Again’ takes on a special meaning. The people of Israel say: ‘Never again.’”
Never again. pic.twitter.com/3H8muhNW5w
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) May 5, 2024
Kato and Miklos Bernath were childhood sweethearts in Szikso, Hungary, when the Nazis ravished their world. Miklos became a partisan, Kato a slave laborer. Miklos was captured and starved, Kato was sent to be murdered in Auschwitz.
— Malkah Fleisher 🕎 (@MalkahFleisher) May 5, 2024
But against all odds, they did not die.
After… pic.twitter.com/nUb8REjfqT
A somber Israel marks Yom Hashoah
Israelis marked Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) on Monday, the first since the attack of Oct. 7, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Shoah.
The ceremonies began Sunday night and continued on Monday morning with the traditional nationwide siren blast, starting at 10 a.m. and lasting for two minutes. Israelis customarily stand still, including cars stopping on the road, to honor the memory of the 6 million Jews slain by the Nazis and their helpers.
The siren was activated by Holocaust survivor Malkah Herman, 92, and her grandson Maor, an officer in the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command, the military announced.
“During this period, when we are witnessing many threats to the State of Israel and the Jewish people, I was given the privilege to take part in commemorating the memory and heroism of our brothers and sisters who were murdered in the Holocaust,” Herman said in a statement.
“Being here alongside my grandson brings me huge excitement and reminds me of the road I went through to get here and gives me pride in the family I founded—thanks to, and despite everything,” she added.
The various government agencies and the Knesset held ceremonies on Monday, attended by the president, prime minister and members of the Knesset.
At the Knesset ceremony, titled “Everyone Has a Name,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog listed the names of the family members of two hostages currently held in Gaza who were killed in the Holocaust. The hostages—Alex Danzig and Mattan Angrest—come from families of those killed and those who survived and made their lives in Israel.
“This year, piece by piece, we were broken, and our eyes saw sights we never thought we would see again, as a free nation in its own country,” Herzog said. “The wounds of Oct. 7 are still open in our hearts, we are grieving and grieving, and we will not be able to remain silent as long as our brothers and sisters are kidnapped by Hamas murderers.”
Powerful words from Prime minister Netanyahu on Yom Hashoa.
— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) May 5, 2024
"We will defeat our genocidal enemies. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. but we know we are not alone, because countless decent people around the world support our cause".
Noone and nothing… pic.twitter.com/5TcJIUUFuD
Yad Vashem ceremony begins commemoration of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day
Israel begins marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on the evening of May 5, with an annual ceremony held at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.
Watch the full ceremony, including testimonials of survivors as they light torches, and a speech by President Isaac Herzog.
The first letters of this Torah scroll were written by IDF soldiers at the site of the Nova massacre. Today it will be carried into Auschwitz, to be completed by six Holocaust survivors in memory of the six million. Chills. #NeverAgainisNow pic.twitter.com/i1vYcEYPu1
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) May 6, 2024
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