Tuesday, May 07, 2024

05/07 Links Pt2: Phillips: A Holocaust remembrance day like no other; Columbia Custodian Trapped by ‘Angry Mob’ Speaks Out; Imagining a world without antisemitism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A Holocaust remembrance day like no other
Israel and the Jewish diaspora are not only traumatised by this mass disdain for Jewish life and wholesale adoption of psychotic lies about Israel. They are also astonished by Britain’s suicidal refusal to join up the dots.

They can’t understand why Britain can’t see the direct connection between the Islamists’ aim to destroy and colonise Israel and their aim to destroy and colonise Britain (and America). They are shocked that the British authorities believe seven months of weekly hate-marches screaming “globalise the intifada” and for the destruction of Israel, and which have terrorised British Jews, constitute the legitimate expression of “free speech”. They are astounded that Britain has done nothing to prevent the emergence of a Muslim bloc that now threatens to upend British politics by religious sectarianism.

Israel and its supporters view such a bloc as innately and irredeemably anti-Jew and anti-west; they note the remarks made by some of these people and their supporters that they are now well on course to Islamise Britain; they are amazed at the near-omerta in Britain over this sectarian voting and bigotry against Israel and the Jews; they are appalled that political leaders are not only doing nothing to challenge this but are actively fanning the flames by regurgitating Hamas propaganda lies about Israel; and they observe that anyone expressing concern about any of this is dismissed as the “Islamophobic” fringe.

Isolated by the west; with rockets still flying from Gaza and Lebanon, with Israelis continuing to be attacked and with tens of thousands of them still displaced and unable to return safely to their border homes; with the dread knowledge that the toll of young conscripts falling in Gaza is bound to rise along with anti-Israel global hysteria as the IDF go into Rafah; with the threat of an American weapons embargo and lawfare in international tribunals aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state hanging over Israel’s head; with Iran sprinting towards building its genocide bomb; with our hearts permanently in our mouths but our spirit unbowed, those of us in Israel nevertheless feel it’s safer — and such a privilege — to be a Jew here rather than in Britain at this pivotal moment in Jewish destiny.
Columbia Custodian Trapped by ‘Angry Mob’ Speaks Out
It’s the viral image that captured the clash between the anti-Israel protesters who stormed Columbia and the campus workers who tried to stop them. As the mob invaded Hamilton Hall in the early hours of April 30, a facilities worker was photographed pushing a demonstrator against a wall.

Later, it emerged that the protester was a 40-year-old trust fund kid named James Carlson, who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $2.3 million. The man who tried to hold him back was Mario Torres, 45, who has worked at Columbia—where the average janitor makes less than $19 an hour—for five years.

Now, in an exclusive interview with The Free Press, Mario Torres describes the experience of being on duty as protesters stormed the building in the early hours of the morning, breaking glass and barricading the entrances. “We don’t expect to go to work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves,” he said.

“They came from both sides of the staircases. They came through the elevators and they were just rushing. It was just like, they had a plan.” Mario said protesters with zip ties, duct tape, and masks “just multiplied and multiplied.”

At one point, he remembers “looking up and I noticed the cameras are covered.” It made him think: “This was definitely planned.”

Torres was trying to “protect the building” when he ended up in an altercation with Carlson: “He had a Columbia hoodie on, and I managed to rip that hoodie off of him and expose his face.” (Carlson was later charged with five felonies, including burglary and reckless endangerment.) “I was freaking out. At that point, I’m thinking about my family. How was I gonna get out? Through the window?”

Torres has not been to campus since the incident. He says he does not feel safe. “When it comes to the public safety, the workers’ safety, people don’t feel comfortable walking through a mob to punch in to get into campus. That’s crazy,” he said.

He added that he’s worried Columbia might take disciplinary action against him for speaking out. He worries about losing a job he loves. He worries about supporting his young family.

“Is Columbia going to retaliate and find a reason to fire me? Is someone going to come after me? So I’m taking a big risk doing this, but I think that they failed. They failed us. And I think that’s the bigger story. They failed us. They should have done more to protect us, and they didn’t.”
Transit union honcho to sue Columbia alleging mistreatment of staffers in building takeover
A prominent transit union leader plans to sue Columbia University over alleged mistreatment of school staffers during a building seizure last week — the latest labor group to wade into the debate surrounding campus unrest.

John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union — which represents 155,000 workers across the airline, transit, railroad, universities, utilities and service sectors — castigated Columbia President Minouche Shafik for waiting too long to authorize the NYPD to clear out Hamilton Hall after demonstrators occupied it last Tuesday night.

“It’s on them to protect their workforce and they didn’t do it,” Samuelsen told POLITICO. He called dissidents’ behavior toward staffers working at the time of the takeover, including two custodians and a security officer, “an outrageous affront to working people.”

One of the union’s local branches represents 725 workers at Columbia, including custodians, security officers and electricians.

Officials should have known the building was a target given its history as the site of an occupation by students advocating for racial justice in the 1960s, he charged.

“We’re exploiting every legal means at our disposal against Columbia, against the individual occupiers of the building … [who] thought that they could hold our custodians hostage to their ideology,” he added.
Yisrael Medad: The anti-Jewish collegiate revolution
We are facing, I would suggest, a situation in which could be said that never have so many university students been not only on the wrong side of history but on the most immoral side as well. That is true at least since 1933 at Oxford, when 428 students against 275 voted in favor of the resolution, which Winston Churchill termed “that abject, squalid, shameless avowal” not to fight for king and country “under no circumstances.”

Any fair observation of the happenings across campuses this past month in the United States would not be wrong to characterize them as aggressive, threatening, menacing, occasionally out-right violent, foul-mouthed, damaging and very anti-Jewish.

Even a correspondent for The New York Times, Katherine Rosman, could not avoid writing on April 26 that the “issue at the core of the conflict rippling across campuses nationwide [is] the tension between pro-Palestinian activism and antisemitism.” Three days later, she highlighted how it works when three Jewish students approached a tent village at Columbia University and the cry went up: “We have Zionists who have entered the camp.”

At the University of California, Los Angeles, a campus journalist was prevented from walking about. A Jewish female student there was beaten and required medical attention and an older man was attacked and threatened. One Christian, supporting Israel at the University of Pennsylvania by holding the blue-and-white flag, was “ghettoized,” having a chalk circle drawn around him (at 0:54 on a CNN video). At Stanford, a protester dressed up as a Hamas suicide-bomber. This violence—actual and implied—and more probably led to the ugly scenes the night afterwards. But the atmosphere of violence was initiated by the pro-Palestine proponents.

This has led to a situation whereby students have termed as “conditionally Jewish” those Jews who are barely acceptable in polite society on campuses, as Tessa Veksler explained to Mandana Dayani. There’s a scale now for being Jewish, and it has nothing to do with Judaism as a religion or ethnicity. Rather, it has to do with the degree of revolutionary value—specifically on behalf of the ideology, Palestinianism—that seeks to eliminate both Jewish national identity and as many Jews as possible.


Imagining a world without antisemitism
An antisemitism-free world would, in short, be a world in which the evil of Hamas was universally recognized and in which Israel would have far more freedom to do what is necessary to stop the would-be Nazis of today.

Moreover, a world free of the hatred of Jews would no longer see Jewish people or institutions attacked by so-called ‘anti-Zionists.’ No synagogues in Teaneck, New Jersey would be targeted by hundreds of demonstrators. No Holocaust memorials in London would be covered up or visibly Jewish men threatened with arrest to “protect” them from the anti-Israel mobs. No elderly Jewish men countering anti-Israel protesters would be struck on the head with megaphones and killed, nor would Jewish student journalists be stabbed in the eye with Palestinian flags.

Perhaps most importantly, in a world in which antisemitism no longer existed at all, the Arab-Israeli conflict would instantly end, as antisemitism is the root cause of the entire conflict.

In this utopian world in which Jew-hatred was nothing but a bad memory, Hamas would have no reason to exist. Instead of building rockets and tunnels, the residents of Gaza could turn their coastal enclave into a paradise with a bustling economy and a high standard of living.

It would not only be Hamas and Gaza that would be completely transformed. The Palestinian Authority and its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, would as well.

Without antisemitism, the ‘pay for slay’ policy would be seen for the evil and waste that it is and be quickly ended. The constant incitement to murder Jews would cease to exist, and there would be no more talk of a Jewish threat to the Al Aqsa Mosque or condemnations of Jews simply visiting the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. The PA would stop calling for a Judenrein state and with their safety guaranteed even in a Palestinian state, the settlements would no longer be an issue.

If the world had truly learned the lessons of the Holocaust, if the slogan “never again” was ever more than empty words, then perhaps this dream would be closer to reality today. But alas, these lessons were not learned, and we live in a world in which antisemitism is commonplace and protected, in which many seek to protect and defend those who openly attempt to finish the job Hitler started, in which Jews are accused of genocide for the crime of not laying down and dying.

Antisemitism is a disease for which there is no cure. That is why decent people must continue to fight for the truth and against hate every day. There is no magic wand to end Jew-hatred. The only thing that can be done is to confront it and bring it into the light of day, so the whole world can see how ugly and disgusting antisemitism truly is.
A Coordinated Attack on America's Jews and Israel
Over these last 150 years, both the collective and personal achievements of Jews have been without precedent, as Western societies have exhibited a more open tolerance, allowing for a Jewish renaissance of power and influence. Yet the advent of the internet and the presence of social media platforms have been the staging areas for much of the adverse messaging now being directed against Israel and global Jewry.

We are now living in a political culture in which public debate is being reduced to a base level of distrust, where alternative viewpoints are often labeled and minimized, and where one's opponents are marginalized.

The Gen Z phenomenon involves a cohort whose educational orientation and socialization experience are fundamentally different from prior generations. Minimally exposed to classroom civics and American history, this age group has been far less connected to the traditions of the earlier periods of America's social and cultural evolution.

Today's language of the street, with its distortions of Zionism, misrepresentations of Judaism, and its outright dismissal of the Jewish people, is attempting to rewrite the Jewish narrative concerning who we are and what we represent. These activists seek to deny both our presence and our historic connection in the Land of Israel and call for our genocide.

The dismembering of the American Jewish political story is designed to weaken U.S. support for Israel and undo the influence and status of Jewish Americans. This displacement is well underway.
The War in Gaza Hasn’t Stopped Israeli-Arab Normalization
While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.
Bassam Tawil: A Palestinian State Will Lead To More Massacres, Final Nail in Coffin Torpedoing Biden Legacy
If the Saudis were really interested in normalizing their relations with Israel, they could have done so long ago. Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is delaying the move, in part, reportedly, out of fear of facing a backlash from his own people. He may, however, also have serious reservations that he would prefer not to talk about in public.

Like most Arabs, the Saudis could not care less about a Palestinian state and might secretly prefer not to have one at all. They are no doubt aware that the Palestinians themselves are the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a state of their own. During the past eight decades, they have acted as a serial wrecking ball to every peaceful place they set foot.

The last thing most Arab states want is a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain justifiably regard Hamas and other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their national security, most likely the main reason they all have refused to take in Gazan refugees.

Blinken's claim that a Palestinian state would "isolate" Iran and its proxies is pure nonsense. The opposite is the case. Iran, its proxies and Qatar would doubtless be extremely happy if the Biden administration would allow them to establish a terrorist state on Israel's doorstep. This state would be used by Iran and its terrorists as a launching pad for more October 7-style massacres of Israelis to further their goal of destroying first Israel, then the Arab states.

It is Israel -- not Iran -- that will find itself "isolated" and surrounded by Iran-backed Islamist terrorist groups...

A Middle East that includes a Palestinian state controlled by Iran and Islamist terrorists will be a less secure region, especially after Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

Biden, by reconfirming that terrorism "works," would embolden all the other terrorists. Just keep on terrorizing everyone, and, when your demands are met, keep on increasing and hardening them.
Mainstream Media Play Defense for Anti-Israel Protesters Occupying Buildings, Causing Campus Chaos
Left-wing pundits want you to know it’s actually not that big of a deal to occupy a building — and they’re actually kind of annoyed you would suggest otherwise.

And MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says he feels like he’s losing his mind a little: “People understand that “occupying buildings on campus” is, like, one of the most common forms of student protest for decades and not some devious new ploy devised by professional anarchist plotters, right?”

He doubled down later on his show, All In, attempting to contextualize the recent events at Columbia University by discussing an incident at Morehouse College in the 1960s when civil rights protesters locked college trustees in their offices.

“College activism has long been a part of college education,” Hayes said, arguing the media’s “sense of proportion” in its recent reporting “seems to be lacking.” He claimed it is “easier to argue about what college kids are doing than to confront the human misery and destruction that’s happening in the actual conflict which is, of course, the source of these protests.”

But it’s worth noting it’s hardly “kids” behind these protests — demonstrators range from undergrads to Ph.D. and law students, with some faculty and outside agitators afoot as well.

Protesters who seized Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall renamed it “Hinds Hall,” in commemoration of the death of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Demonstrators vandalized the building, breaking doors and windows, and blockaded entrances before the New York Police Department performed a sweep of the building. At least 119 people who barricaded themselves inside the admissions building were arrested. The cost of damage to the building is likely to total thousands of dollars.
Al-Jazeera’s Holocaust legacy: Justification alongside outright denial
The decision by the Israeli government to shut the offices of Al Jazeera in the country sparked heated debates both in the country and abroad, with some officials justifying the move on the backdrop of what they deemed homeland security issues, as well as a history of antisemitism propagated by the official Qatari mouthpiece.

According to a report by the Zachor Institute, the Qatari-owned media gargantuan has provided a platform for antisemitic discourse in many instances, including the broadcasting of sermons by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Muslim Brotherhood leading cleric who endorsed suicide bombings, in which the latter claimed that Allah used Adolf Hitler to inflict the Holocaust upon the Jews as “divine punishment,” praising him for “putting [Jews] in their place.”

However, instances of justification and glorification of the Holocaust are not the only type of antisemitic discourse promoted on Al Jazeera, as outright holocaust denial has also been given a platform on its different outlets.

The most well-known affair regarding Holocaust denial by Al Jazeera, more specifically by its “younger” tributary AJ+, is a seven-minute “documentary” published in May 2019, which reportedly claimed that the Holocaust was “different from how the Jews tell it,” promoting it with a tweet reading “Gas ovens killed millions of Jews…So the story says. How true is the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?”

The decision by the Israeli government to shut the offices of Al Jazeera in the country sparked heated debates both in the country and abroad, with some officials justifying the move on the backdrop of what they deemed homeland security issues, as well as a history of antisemitism propagated by the official Qatari mouthpiece.

According to a report by the Zachor Institute, the Qatari-owned media gargantuan has provided a platform for antisemitic discourse in many instances, including the broadcasting of sermons by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Muslim Brotherhood leading cleric who endorsed suicide bombings, in which the latter claimed that Allah used Adolf Hitler to inflict the Holocaust upon the Jews as “divine punishment,” praising him for “putting [Jews] in their place.”

However, instances of justification and glorification of the Holocaust are not the only type of antisemitic discourse promoted on Al Jazeera, as outright holocaust denial has also been given a platform on its different outlets.

The most well-known affair regarding Holocaust denial by Al Jazeera, more specifically by its “younger” tributary AJ+, is a seven-minute “documentary” published in May 2019, which reportedly claimed that the Holocaust was “different from how the Jews tell it,” promoting it with a tweet reading “Gas ovens killed millions of Jews…So the story says. How true is the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?”


The People Setting America on Fire
There remains, after all this speculation, another basic question. Is all of this really legal?

Judging by the laws on the books, the answer would seem to be “no.” As Joseph Simonson of The Washington Free Beacon has reported on multiple occasions, the rules of the Internal Revenue Service explicitly prohibit 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofits from engaging in “planned activities that violate laws” or “induce the commission of a crime.” IRS Rev. Rul. 75-384 states explicitly that even an “antiwar protest organization” committed to “world peace,” if it sponsors “demonstrations in which demonstrators are urged to commit violations of local ordinances and breaches of public order,” would not qualify for tax-exempt status.

When I asked Shideler for his opinion on why not only the IRS, but federal and local law enforcement, seemed reluctant to act against what seemed to be clear violations of the law, he offered me a quote from The Wire: “If you follow drugs, you get drugs and drug dealers. If you follow the money, you don’t know what you’re going to get.” Many of the professional agitators involved in lawbreaking are quite literally on the payroll of big-city political machines, or provide important services such as get-out-the-vote organizing and phone banking during low-turnout Democratic primaries. As mentioned above, Abdullah Akl, the WOL organizer popping up across New York calling on “Abu Obeida” to “strike Tel Aviv,” is also an employee of Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change, and Sarsour herself has appeared at various protest encampments and New York City direct actions. But her Arab American Association of New York, which co-organized an Oct. 21 “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine Protest” with WOL, has received $6.8 million in New York City taxpayer funds since 2010, according to a review of records by the New York Post.

A sense of the uncomfortable questions that might be raised by any serious attempt to go after these groups can be gleaned from a 2023 grand jury indictment in Georgia, where prosecutors brought state RICO charges against several dozen anarchists and revolutionaries involved in the “Stop Cop City” protests against the planned construction of a police training facility in Atlanta. The indictment identified a network of fraudulent nonprofits, fiscal sponsors, and bail funds that were, in reality, front groups controlled by three anarchist roommates, who used millions in tax-exempt funds raised for ostensibly charitable purposes to further what prosecutors allege was a violent criminal conspiracy involving the illegal occupation of public land, planned confrontations with police, and organized doxxing and harassment campaigns targeting police and private citizens working at construction companies contracted to build the facility. The “Atlanta Solidarity Fund,” for instance, was a bail fund used to support arrested Stop Cop City protesters, while the “Forest Justice Defense Fund” reimbursed “Forest Defenders”—i.e., the group’s officers and their antifa comrades—for the purchase of tents, camping supplies, surveillance equipment, shortwave radios, drones, and ammunition.

Where did the money come from? From donations solicited through left-wing fundraising and organizing networks. One of those networks was the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), an umbrella group for more than 80 “community organizations,” including the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, which organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested. CJA’s website promotes a grab bag of far-left causes, and includes a “Free Palestine” page proclaiming that “the path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.” To this day—eight months after the Georgia RICO indictment alleged that the Forest Justice Defense Fund was a fraudulent charity paying for ammunition purchases in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy—CJA maintains a Stop Cop City page urging readers to donate to the Forest Justice Defense Fund and the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. CJA also endorsed a “statement of solidarity” with Stop Cop City, which claimed, by the inexorable logic of intersectionality, the fight against “gentrification and police violence” in Atlanta as part of the fight against climate change.

CJA is a subsidiary of the Movement Strategy Center, a California-based 501(c)(3) that has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and various branches of the Open Society network. But it has another financial supporter, one that may come as a surprise: You, the American taxpayer. In November, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was entrusting $50 million in federal grant money under the Inflation Reduction Act to the CJA, to be distributed in sub-grants to fund “environmental justice” projects by “community-based nonprofit organizations.”

“Every person has a right to drink clean water, breathe clean air, and live in a community that is healthy and safe,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement on the EPA grant. “For too long, however, low-income communities, immigrant communities, Native communities, and communities of color have endured disproportionate levels of air, water, and soil pollution. That is why President Joe Biden and I have put equity at the center of our nation’s largest investment in climate in history. Today’s announcement puts that commitment into action by ensuring critical resources to fund environmental justice projects across the country reach the organizations that know their communities best.”

Harris—give her credit—is an artist of such officialese, which is meant to signify precisely nothing to the average citizen. It comes as a shock to learn, inadvertently, and due to honest but perhaps naive efforts of some red-state prosecutor, what the vice president means when she says her administration is “ensuring critical resources to fund environmental justice projects across the country reach the organizations that know their communities best.” What she means is that the federal government is funneling tens of millions of dollars of public money to a group that understands “environmental justice” to imply the abolition of policing, the perpetual struggle against “white supremacy,” and the liberation of Palestine.

It’s remarkable what one can find from pulling on such threads. Which may be why, to date, there has been very little political will to pull on them.
Anarchist Website Encouraging Violence at U.S. Campuses
According to The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, an anarchist website, CrimethInc.com has been guiding the participants of anti-Israel protests on university campuses across the United States on how to become more radical, and how to fight off school administrators and the police. “Behind the young idealists is an organized movement of leftists who want to spread disorder,” writes The Wall Street Journal. According to the New York Post, CrimethInc.com analyses the protests and gives students advice on how to escalate the situation.

The advice includes:
student occupations should take buildings whenever possible;
organisers should not concern themselves with de-escalation or remaining peaceful;
protesters should be dynamic and meet the cops head-on;
they should “surround” and “force out the police,” because the pro-Palestinian movement must be a movement against the police;
participants should arm themselves with “plywood, insulation board, lumber, scrap wood, metal sheeting, garbage cans, and water barrels” or whatever other tools they can find on campus.

The protest guides reveal that universities are attracting professional demonstrators whose goal is to spread their knowledge to recruit and train another generation.

Arrests of violent protesters in recent weeks have made it clear that a number of those arrested were not students, and had no affiliation with the university whose territory they were demonstrating on. According to New York police, nearly half of the 300 protesters arrested at two campuses last week weren’t students. The University of Texas said that, of the 79 people arrested on its campus last week, 45 had no affiliation with the university. Some of the 25 demonstrators arrested on Saturday at the University of Virginia were “individuals unaffiliated with the university.”
Khaled Abu Toameh: How Do Palestinians View the U.S. "Campus Intifada?"
Representatives of the PA and Hamas, as well as their media, have reported extensively on the protests on U.S. campuses, expressing hope that they will force the U.S. administration to adopt a tougher policy against Israel. They see the protests as aimed at eliminating Israel and undermining the United States.

PA leaders are pleased with the anti-Israel protests at American universities but are unwilling to tolerate similar demonstrations at their own universities, fearing that they could be used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to create instability and insecurity.

In recent weeks, PA security officers have been removing Hamas flags from electricity poles in villages and towns in the West Bank. PA security forces have also foiled attempts by some students to set up encampments at Palestinian campuses similar to those at U.S. campuses.

Hamas, which has a long record of targeting political opponents, college students, journalists, and human rights activists, was the first Palestinian party to condemn the U.S. authorities for their actions against anti-Israel protesters, some of whom have publicly declared their support for the Iran-backed terrorist group.

At the same time, Palestinian columnists have lamented the lack of comparable demonstrations at Arab and Palestinian educational institutions. Palestinian political analyst Rima Kattaneh Nazzal wrote: "Where are Arab universities in this uprising? Where is the Palestinian academic community, especially the student blocs and university professors? Why do they remain silent?"
The Campus Protests Are Not "Antiwar" or "Pro-Palestinian." They Are "Anti-Israel"
The Associated Press says the campus demonstrators are "antiwar protesters." The New York Times has gone with "pro-Palestinian." These aren't neutral, or accurate, descriptions.

A leading group backing the demonstrations, Students for Justice in Palestine, exulted in the terrorist attack "against the Zionist enemy" on Oct. 7.

Terrorist-group regalia has been spotted at protests at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. Incidents too numerous to count have led the Anti-Defamation League to labeled the Columbia demonstrators "pro-Hamas activists."

Peace is not the organizing principle of the protests.

The protesters at Columbia have listed several official demands. They don't include that Hamas release all its hostages.

The protests are not even bringing attention to the plight of Gazans. They're bringing attention to the protesters.

The media should call the protests what they are: anti-Israel.
Where Are the Progressive Politicians Standing Up to the Jew Hatred on Campus?
The members of the progressive caucus in the US House of Representatives, known as “The Squad,” have recently coalesced around support for the “peaceful” antisemitic protests engulfing college campuses.

The Squad hears “ceasefire” when “Globalize the Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea” are chanted. They are pandering to the students who are currently calling for a Palestine “free” of Jews, and who believe their ideology that everything in the United States — and globally — is about race and an “oppressor vs. oppressed” ideology.

The litmus test for all progressive policies is that they must advance “racial justice and equity” (The House Progressive Promise). Members of the Squad justify their anti-Zionist position by falsely accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state.” This accusation is a lie, but it squares nicely with the objective of the progressive platform which is to advance their particular version of racial justice and equity — which means the demonization of whomever they deem to be “white” and “powerful.”

Members of the Squad believe that their commitment to “dismantle the systems of oppression and discrimination that allow racism to persist” obligates them to oppose Israel.

The following is a statement that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) made on October 8, 2024, while Hamas sadists were still on a killing rampage in Israel and Hamas rockets were reigning down on Israeli towns:
The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance. The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. No person, no child anywhere should have to suffer or live in fear of violence. We cannot ignore the humanity in each other. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.

I believe professor and diversity advocate Mona Khoury-Kassabri, the Vice President for “Strategy and Inclusion” at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, may have a different viewpoint concerning Congresswoman Tlaib’s libelous accusation that Israel is an apartheid state, as would the Arab-Israeli doctors who are studying and practicing medicine in Israel, all Arab citizens who have equal rights and serve in the Knesset and Supreme Court, and many others.

Israel is not an apartheid state. For just the beginnings of proof, you can look here.

New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), probably the most well-known member of the Squad, hurried up to Columbia to give her support to the students of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment who demanded that Columbia University divest from all things Israel.
House Republican Unveils Censure Resolution Against Ilhan Omar After Remark About Some Jewish Students Being ‘Pro-Genocide’
On Tuesday, a House Republican unveiled a censure resolution against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after the member of the leftist “Squad” suggested that some Jewish students are “pro-genocide.”

The measure, introduced by Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), seeks to formally rebuke Omar for her “recent hateful comments and history of anti-Semitism.”

A leading provision cites what Omar said about anti-Semitism while visiting Columbia University last month amid anti-Israel protests in response to the Israel-Hamas war. In speaking with a Fox 5 New York reporter, Omar noted she had just met some Jewish students in an encampment.

“I think it is really unfortunate,” Omar continued, “that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe, and that we should not have to tolerate anti-Semitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”

Bacon’s resolution says Omar “has a long and demonstrated history of hateful rhetoric that plays into the worst anti-Semitic tropes. Her “slanderous comments against Jewish students could inflame violence against the Jewish community,” the measure adds.

Other provisions in the resolution note different statistics, including a finding from the Anti-Defamation League that anti-Semitic incidents across the United States spiked last year, as well as past comments from Omar about Israel that led to her getting kicked off the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“The recent remarks by Rep. Omar about Jewish American students being pro-genocide shows her increasing disregard for the Jewish people and she is perpetuating and increasing antisemitism in our country,” Bacon said in a statement on Tuesday.
Tlaib blames House for Israel’s Rafah invasion and calls for ICC to arrest Netanyahu
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) blasted House Republicans and many of her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday who voted for aid to Israel last month and “gave their consent” to a potential Israeli invasion of Rafah.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has been vocal in her opposition to the Jewish state and its war against Hamas and in calling for a permanent ceasefire as Gaza civilians make up a majority of the conflict’s casualties.

“It’s no coincidence that immediately after our government sent the Israeli apartheid regime over $14 billion with absolutely no conditions on upholding human rights, Netanyahu began a ground invasion of Rafah to continue the genocide of Palestinians — with ammunition and bombs paid for by our tax dollars,” Tlaib said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Many of my colleagues are going to express concern and horror at the crimes against humanity that are about to unfold, even though they just voted to send Netanyahu billions more in weapons,” the Michigan Democrat continued. “Do not be misled, they gave their consent for these atrocities, and our country is actively participating in genocide.”

Lawmakers approved a $26.38 billion aid package to Israel on April 20, which includes funds to replenish the country’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems as well as $3.5 billion to go toward securing advanced weapons systems and other defense services. The package also includes about $9 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza.

The bill passed with support from 366 members, but 37 Republicans and 21 Democrats voted against it.

Tlaib also called on the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials to “finally hold them accountable for this genocide” — a move that the Biden administration does not support.
At Yeshiva U, ‘accelerated transfer’ for students who feel threatened
Yeshiva University has reopened its admissions cycle for undergraduate applicants who feel threatened on other American campuses, including for its honors program. Those applicants have until May 31 to apply.

The admissions cycle “has seen students choosing YU over other elite institutions. This trend is expected to continue among transfers,” Yeshiva stated.

It added that it is creating new faculty positions to accommodate that growth and is “in active discussions with professors who seek to be part of an institution whose core values align with their own.”

“We have all watched with great shock and sadness the public protests laced with antisemitism on college campuses throughout the United States, including in our neighboring campuses of Columbia and NYU,” stated Rabbi Ari Berman, president of YU.

“Ultimately, these are issues that need to be addressed by these respective universities. It is not good for America or for the Jewish people for any campus to be unsafe for Jewish students or students of any minority or vulnerable population,” Berman said. “We extend our hand to be of any assistance in supporting efforts by these universities to protect their students from threats to their safety.”

“We cannot ignore the profound distress we have been witnessing. No Jewish student should have to face the threats and intimidation that has sadly been taking place,” he added. “While our enrollments are already full for the coming year, we at the flagship Jewish university will not turn our backs on these students.”
Gaza war not a leading issue for college students despite campus protests
Anti-Israel protests regarding the war in Gaza have erupted at college campuses across the country, but polling shows it is not a top issue for most people attending university.

A Generation Lab poll shared with Axios shows the war in Gaza ranks at the bottom among top issues for college students. The survey shows only 13% of college students domestically rank it as one of the most important issues.

The top issues for college students include healthcare reform (40%), education (38%), economic matters (37%), civil rights (36%), climate change (35%), gun laws (32%), immigration (21%), and national security (15%).

The fiery protests on several campuses, including at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, have dominated headlines in recent weeks, but despite the uproar, the protesters demanding divestment from Israel over the war against Hamas appear to be a vocal minority.

The poll shows only 8% of those surveyed said they participated in the protests — on either side. A plurality supports the encampments, 45%, compared to 30% who said they were neutral and 24% who said they were strongly or a bit opposed, per the survey.
Federal lawsuit alleges antisemitic environment, retaliation at Brooklyn high school
A school teacher and public security officer have filed a federal lawsuit against a public school in Brooklyn, N.Y., in addition to several of its employees, New York City and the city’s top education official, alleging a tolerance and platforming for antisemitic harassment and retaliation.

Danielle Kaminsky and Michael Beaudry launched the suit in district court. The two worked at Origins High School in Sheepshead Bay, which became the subject of a New York City Police Department investigation following a death threat directed towards Jewish teachers.

The suit alleges that the school failed to contain a group of students who, after the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, “engaged in a broad campaign of hate speech while on school premises.”

That allegedly included calls for violence against Jews, the end of Israel and the glorification of Adolf Hitler. The campaign, the plaintiffs say, was conducted through vandalism of school property, emails, text messages, taunts and notes directed to Jewish students and teachers.

That included an email that said “All Jews need to be exterminated” and labeled Kaminsky a “foul whiny Jew” who should be “put to an end” by a Muslim student.

Kaminsky, who has been teaching at Origins since 2017, alleges that she was dismissed, ridiculed and retaliated against when she brought her concerns to school administrators. Beaudry, who serves as campus director, alleges that he was hit with disciplinary infractions for reporting the antisemitic acts and other threats.

Dara Kammerman, who is among the named defendants, serves as interim assistant principal. It is alleged in the lawsuit that she carried out retaliation against Beaudry, presented slanted views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to students and allowed a group of students to promote at an assembly a rally taking place nearby that was to “honor the martyrs,” referring to the Hamas murderers and rapists who carried out the atrocities of Oct. 7 that led to the deaths of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of more than 250 men, women and children.
Even the ‘peaceful’ campus protests are actually violent bullying
How “nonviolent” are nonviolent protests?

The cliché from left-wing politicians and academia is that the last two months’ worth of campus mob actions have been a marvel of nonaggression.

Yet actually, the mobs are “nonviolent” only because everyone else is nonviolent, surrendering to the agitators’ use of physical bodily force to get their way.

The nonviolence line is common on New York’s left.

After Columbia University first called the police on its campus lawbreakers in mid-April, city Comptroller Brad Lander said such action against “nonviolent protest” violated the university’s protection of speech.

AOC added that “calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations . . . is dangerous.”

“Nonviolent” has also become the go-to neutral term.

“The one thing” Columbia protesters “have not been in these days is violent,” Columbia prof Mark Mazower, in a neutral diary for the Financial Times, observed.

These accounts ignore the reality: Protesters use physical bodily force to bully others and to subvert the rule of law.

Even when the mobs are looking peaceful, they’re not really peaceful.

As Michael Powell observed in The Atlantic of the “liberated zone” on the Columbia lawn, self-appointed, keffiyah-masked leaders formed a “human chain” to keep “Zionists” from “entering the camp.”

These “liberated zone” occupiers had no legal or moral right to prohibit other people, including people with different viewpoints or different physical emblems (like an Israeli flag) from using the lawn.

It is a space open, theoretically, to everyone affiliated with Columbia.

The only thing keeping out the “Zionists” was the credible threat of mob violence: that “human chain” wall of bodies.


Portland State University president apologizes to anti-Israel protesters for calling police
The inmates are running the asylums at college campuses around the country.

Protester privilege is the latest left-wing fad dominating American culture. Apparently, people can commit criminal acts, break laws, invade and occupy buildings, and any other number of illegal activities just so long as all of it is done under the guise of “Free Palestine.”

Cowardly university presidents and officials have genuflected to the whims and demands of a bunch of people who, for the most part, have never set foot out in the real world and know what real responsibilities are. This is indicative of the toxic rot at the core of left-wing political ideology and activism. The adults who are supposed to be in charge and educate future generations have opted to coddle and appease them. One such example is the gutless president of Portland State University, Ann Cudd.

After protesters invaded, ransacked, and took the university’s library hostage and occupied it, Cudd (rightfully) called the police for help. Police eventually cleared the building of its illegal occupants, and the university was able to reclaim it. Yet after Cudd did the correct and responsible thing, she apologized to the criminals and delinquents for getting law enforcement officers involved.

“I know our cooperation with the Portland Police Bureau was upsetting to some in our community, and I want to address that directly,” Cudd wrote in a message posted to the university website. “We would not have taken that step if we thought this matter could be resolved in any other way.”

“I negotiated with students, with the assistance of three faculty members, to provide an opportunity for students to leave the library with minimal adverse consequences,” Cudd added. “While we learned from the faculty members that 50-100 students then left the library, the ones who remained chose not to accept my offer and made it clear that they would not leave voluntarily.”
Columbia U Center for Palestine Studies: Cheerleaders for Hamas
Columbia officially opened the Center for Palestine Studies in 2010, the first American university to dedicate an institute to the study of Palestinian Arabs. Specifying that its mission is “supporting and defending the academic freedom of students, faculty and schools in the Occupied Territories,” the Center makes no pretense of intellectual objectivity and makes clear through its events and the faculty it hires that it supports the BDS movement which was designed to further the goals of terrorist groups like Hamas and to delegitimize, weaken and destroy the Jewish State.

The faculty in charge of the Center reads like a who’s-who list of academic Jew-haters. The original co-directors of the Center were Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi and Barnard College professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. Khalidi is known for his extreme hostility to Israel which he has called “racist” and “basically an apartheid system in creation.” El Haj has condemned academic researchers in Israel, claiming that the work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a screen for the “ongoing practice of colonial nationhood” and that the assumption that ancient Israelite kingdoms were once located in the land that constitutes modern-day Israel is a “pure political fabrication.” Brian Boyd, the current co-director of the Center with El-Haj, is a leader in the genocidal BDS movement against Israel and has pushed for the American Archeological Association to boycott Israeli universities. While not officially affiliated with the Center, notorious Columbia history professor Joseph Massad also belongs on this list for publishing an article calling the October 7th attacks “awesome” and “the stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance” against “cruel colonizers.”

The official Center website states that it was created to honor “the specific scholarly legacy of Professor Edward Said at the university where he taught for forty years.” The late Edward Said was a Columbia professor who preached in his academic writing and his extracurricular activities that Israel was both illegitimate and also a colonialist state. He was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Palestinian National Council until 1991 when he resigned because he thought Yasser Arafat’s policies were too moderate towards Israel.

Describing the Center for Palestine Studies as “Ramallah on the Hudson,” author A.J. Caschetta explains that “Columbia has assembled the anti-Israel all-stars of academia, such as Joseph Massad, who has called for ‘the continuing resistance of Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories to all the civil and military institutions that uphold Jewish supremacy.’ Another member of CPS is Hamid Dabashi, who wrote that Israel is a ‘key actor’ in ‘every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world.’”

Events hosted by the Center have included a speech from BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti, who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, on “Palestine’s South Africa Moment?” and a Teacher’s Workshop on “Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine” which included the false Hamas series of maps—a form of cartographic genocide which depicts the invasion and colonization of Arab “Palestine” by the Jews—on its event poster.


Singing ‘Hatikvah’ in pro-Palestinian Harvard
Amid a wave of protests by pro-Palestinian students across the United States, Jewish students have decided to launch a counterattack against displays of antisemitism.

Liat (not her real name), a doctoral student at Harvard University, together with other students, entered the anti-Israel lion’s den on campus—the protest encampment from which calls against Israel emanated, and where students expressed solidarity with Hamas’ terrorist acts.

“Feeling that the administration was abandoning the Jewish and Israeli students and trying to avoid taking effective action, we decided to take steps ourselves. Our aim was to shake things up, demonstrating that this situation is unacceptable to us and cannot continue in this manner,” Liat told Israel Hayom. “We wanted to convey the message that we do not accept our exclusion from campus and the administration’s indifference to what is happening on campus. We entered the hateful encampment area, showed our presence and made our voices heard.”

Upon entering the anti-Israel protest encampment, the Jewish students began marching with signs bearing pictures of the Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza, and sang the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah.”

“The hostile students stood around us, filming and keeping their distance, but did not make contact or touch us. They did not expect this. Their arrogant smiles were replaced by looks of anger and shock. They were very displeased, to say the least,” said Liat.

She added that their protest was coordinated with Harvard’s security authorities, who increased their presence in the area.

“We knew that the pro-Palestinian students were keeping an eye on people they identified as not being ‘one of them.’ We anticipated that they would remember our faces and potentially follow us around campus. It’s upsetting. There’s always a certain level of apprehension, however, up until now they haven’t been violent. We entered the encampment as a group, which definitely gave us a sense of strength and security.”
Students in Harvard Encampment Threatened With Suspension After Nearly 2 Weeks
Harvard University's interim president, Alan Garber, on Monday told protesters encamped on campus to disband or they would be placed on "involuntary leave," after nearly two weeks of chaos on campus from the unsanctioned tent encampment.

Garber’s message indicated to student protesters that unless they disband they could be prohibited from sitting for exams and from residing in campus housing, among other sanctions. Protesters erected the anti-Israel encampment on Harvard Yard on April 24. They are demanding the school divest from companies tied to Israel.

The encampment, which at the outset administrators indicated violated university policies, has been accused of intimidation and harassment, creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and engaging in chants calling for "the destruction of Israel." Nonetheless, the encampment has been allowed to continue for 12 days and, according to Harvard graduate student Shabbos Kestenbaum, nothing appears to have changed Monday following Garber's order.

"After 12 days of silence, Harvard finally condemned the pro-Hamas encampments and the harassment of Jewish students. But President Alan Garber hasn’t removed them from campus!" Kestenbaum, who is suing Harvard over unchecked anti-Semitism on its campus, said on social media Monday. "Words mean nothing when antisemitic students feel they can follow Jews on their way to class."

Harvard’s ultimatum follows other schools that have decided to take action against unauthorized anti-Israel protests happening on campuses around the country. Last week at Columbia University, where the anti-Israel encampment movement began in early April, officials confirmed suspensions had begun for students who refused to leave the encampment. Also last week, following a raucous few days at UNC-Chapel Hill’s encampment which saw pro-Palestinian protesters replace an American flag in the middle of campus with a Palestinian flag, students also began facing disciplinary action.


43 detained at UCLA for violating overnight curfew; in-person classes canceled
Over 40 people were detained at UCLA Monday and classes shifted from in-person to remote for a third straight day despite an effort to return to normalcy following unrest and violence on the campus last week that centered around a now-dismantled pro-Palestinian encampment.

FOX 11's ground crew showed deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department working with UCLA campus police to detain 43 people accused of violating the campus's overnight curfew.

Those detained were loaded into a sheriff's department bus to be taken to a jail for processing on suspicion of what police called conspiracy to commit burglary. Among those detained were two journalists-- William Gude and Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.

Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, wrote on X, "Both campus media journalists and external journalists must be allowed to cover these protests without law enforcement interference."

She called the arrests of the journalists "a clear violation of both the First Amendment" and California law.

Organizers of the protests at UCLA posted on social media Monday morning that the early morning arrests were illegal and "a continuation of the consistent repression of student activism and the increase of militarization of universities." The group said protesters "refuse to conduct business as usual" until the university meets demands for divestment from Israel and Israeli-tied businesses.

UCLA announced Monday afternoon that all classes will be held remotely for the rest of the week due to the "continued disruptions" on campus.


Pop Star Macklemore Releases Anti-Israel Song: ‘Not Voting for Biden,’ ‘Blood on Your Hands’
Rapper and social justice warrior Macklemore released an anti-Israel song this week in which he vowed to not vote for Biden in the 2024 election.

Released on Monday through the rapper’s Instagram account, the song, titled “Hinds Hall” – a reference to the building that pro-Palestinian protesters occupied at Columbia University – covers Israel’s war in Gaza and accuses the country of horrific war crimes.

“The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all,” he raps in the song.

“And fuck no, I’m not voting for you in the fall,” he adds.

As noted by the New York Post, Columbia University protesters named the building they occupied “Hinds Hall” to “honor of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.”

Clips of several other politicians, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky,), Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who is running against far-left “Squad” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in New York’s 16th District Democratic primary, are used in the music video for “Hind’s Hall.”


MIT Threatens To Suspend Any Anti-Israel Protesters Who Fail To Leave Encampment
Massachusetts Institute of Technology students residing in the anti-Israel encampment were offered two options today: leave the encampment, or stay and face suspension.

In a letter from Chancellor Melissa Nobles, students were told to leave the encampment by 2:30 P.M. or face suspension. As the deadline passed, most students had cleared the encampment, though a handful of individuals remained, according to Daily Wire sources on the ground at the university.

Students who agree to swipe their ID card for a time stamp and voluntarily leave will be given a written warning to not further violate any policies. If students who have already been sanctioned by the school leave by the deadline, it will be seen as a “significant mitigating factor” when the school reviews their case.

For those who do not leave and have not yet faced sanctions, they will be placed on “academic suspension” and be barred from classes, exams, or research activities until the end of the semester but will be allowed to live in their dorms and use dining halls. Those who are sanctioned will be required to leave campus entirely.

“You will also be prohibited from participating in commencement activities or any cocurricular activities,” Nobles wrote. “You will also not be permitted to reside in your assigned residence hall or use MIT dining halls. You must leave campus immediately, but you will continue to have access to services at MIT Health.”


Police disband anti-Israel protesters at Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich universities
Police on Tuesday broke up anti-Israel demonstrations at universities in Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich, which were inspired by similar demonstrations on campuses around the world.

German police cleared an anti-Israel protest camp on Tuesday at a courtyard of the Freie Universität Berlin, which had called for a stop to Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

Some 100 people set up two dozen tents on the campus on Tuesday, joining a call by the so-called “Student Coalition Berlin” to occupy German universities.

Students from various Berlin universities joined the anti-Israel protest, carrying Palestinian flags and shouting slogans supporting Palestinians and denouncing Israel and Germany.

The student group demanded that criminal charges be dropped against students and others who had shown solidarity with Palestinians on campuses, and for the universities to publicly oppose planned reforms to Berlin’s senate that would enable the expulsion of students on political grounds.

They also urged banning police from the campus and reinstating academics and staff members of German universities and research institutes who were expelled or defunded because of their anti-Israel stance.

Freie Universität Berlin said the protesters tried to enter university rooms and lecture halls aiming to occupy them, and that the university filed criminal complaints and suspended lectures in several buildings.

“This kind of protest is not dialogue oriented. An occupation of university property is not acceptable. We welcome academic debate and dialogue – but not in this form,” said Guenter Ziegler, president of Freie Universität Berlin.
MelbUni tries (but FAILS!) to kick Avi Yemini off campus for 'spreading hate' against Hamas
Jewish Students took to Melbourne University to rally against the rising tide of antisemitism, bullying and intimidation faced by Jewish students on campus.

As the gathering aimed to foster support for the Jewish community, tensions escalated when anti-Israel protesters, their faces hidden behind masks and keffiyehs, attempted to disrupt Rebel News reporting of the pro-Hamas encampment on campus.

In a heated moment, one protester tried to seize the microphone from me, only to be halted by the intervention of security guard Daniel.

Among the protesters, a leader urged the crowd to chant "from the river to the sea," a phrase laden with implications of ethnic cleansing. Melbourne University's media team attempted to remove me from the scene, ironically citing concerns of 'hate speech,' which raised eyebrows as they allowed a pro-Hamas group to remain, chanting genocidal slogans without interruption.

The rally garnered broad support from the Jewish community, with representatives from various organisations, including the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV).

Hundreds of students and community members waved Australian and Israeli flags while brandishing signs denouncing antisemitism, harassment and intimidation.


Protesters Push Pro-Hamas Propaganda, Then These Students Showed Up
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a DM clip of American flag-waving students at the University of Chicago fighting back against the pro-Palestinian protesters on their campus.


Moment Jewish Cambridge student unfurls Israeli flag at encampment rally before it is ripped from his hands by shoving protester - after attending to 'take a stand' because his friends 'feel scared' on campus
A lone Jewish student was pushed and shoved as he unfurled an Israeli flag at a pro Gaza encampment outside Cambridge University's Kings College, after attending to 'take a stand' as his friends 'feel scared' on campus.

Around 60 tents have been erected outside the prestigious college with students demanding an end 'to the genocide' and that Cambridge University divest in any companies linked to Israel.

As around 200 protestors held a rally chanting anti-Israel slogans, student Ari Vladimir, 19, unfurled an Israel flag and shouted support for the country.

One protestor grabbed the flag from him and threw it to the ground as he was jostled.

Mr Vladimir told MailOnline: 'I had to come here to express my support for Israel. If these people have a right to protest then so do I.

'As you saw, I didn't feel particularly welcome. I was pushed and shoved and felt quite scared.

'But I wanted these people to know that the Jewish people will never be defeated and we stand with Israel.'

Mr Vladimir is a first year history student at Christ's College who comes from New York.

He said that he was alone because many of his fellow Jewish students feel 'intimidated,' and were too scared to join him.

He added: 'A lot of Jewish students on campus feel quite scared. They are just keeping their heads down. But I had to take a stand.

'This encampment is going to make Jewish students even more concerned. How would you feel walking past people who are supporting Hamas?'
Teacher at Wimbledon Catholic School suspended on suspicion of supporting Hamas
Ronan Preastuin, a religious education teacher at Ursuline High School, has called 7 October a “justified act of resistance”, written that Hamas “committed no crime” and called for “Glory to #Hamas”.

He has also posted about his virulent hatred of the State of Israel. He wrote that “#Israel is not a true Jewish state, but an inversion and perversion of Judaism.” He has prayed for God to grant victory to Hamas over “the grotesque, barbaric, idol worshipping invaders @IDF.”

His posts were first exposed by the GnasherJew website on 23 April 2024, and a few hours later Mr Preastuin had removed his X account.
- On 31 March 2024 he posted “Glory to #Hamas and freedom for humanity, victory over the imperialist racists! The destruction of the racist state of #Isarel is coming soon.”
- On 26 March 2024 he posted “You mean #Hamas and #Hezbollah freedom fighters and defenders of humanity”
- On 8 April 2024 he posted “We stand shoulder to shoulder with #Hamas #Palestine who have been invaded by American and European colonisers masquerading as a Jewish state.”
- On 1 March 2024 he posted: “Yes we will and are ALL praying for the soldiers of destiny #HAMAS. May God grand [sic] them victory in their homeland over the grotesque, barbaric, idol worshipping invaders @IDF.”
- On 22 April 2024 he posted “Hamas are not terrorists, they are resistance to occupation. #Israel is not a true Jewish state, but an inversion and perversion of Judaism. It’s stated goal is rebuild the Temple – to erect a false Messianic state in rebellion of G-d. Without justice prayers are in vain Amos 5.”
- On 19 January 2024 he posted “So yes October 7 was a justified act of resistance under a brutal and crushing occupation.”
- On 25 January 2024 he posted “I’m delighted to infirm [sic] you monsters #Hamas committed no crime. @IsraelinIreland. Their actions were entirely legitimate resistance to a criminal state masquerading as Jewish, colonising their country.”

Mr Preastuin’s posts appear to be in breach of s.12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 because he expressed an opinion or belief that is in support of a proscribed organisation (Hamas) and in doing so was reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression was directed would be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation. He has been reported to the police.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Columbia Guarantees 4.0 GPA To Anyone Participating In Pro-Terror Rally (satire)
An Ivy League institution that has become a hotbed of anti-Israel, antisemitic agitation since October 7 of last year announced today that students who could demonstrate sufficient involvement with the protests, tent encampment, incitement to violence, and glorification of Islamist supremacism taking place on campus this academic year will earn perfect grades for both semesters, regardless of performance on exams, assignments, or other factors that normally determine the figure.

The Academic Standards Committee at Columbia University sent out notices Tuesday apprising all undergraduates who had registered for the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters that proof of at least ten hours’ participation in the pro-jihad, rape-apologist rallies in the various parts of the Morningside Heights compound will entitle them to an automatic 4.0 Grade Point Average for both terms, the highest possible GPA.

The announcement detailed the procedures for exercising the 4.0 GPA: the student must provide screenshots of, and links to, social media posts documenting their participation in the events on at least seven occasions since Hamas launched its murderous rape, torture, theft, and kidnapping spree in southern Israel on October 7 last year; a Palestinian flag, a watermelon emoji, a red triangle, or some other accepted symbol of endorsement for the violence itself, and the intimidation of “Zionists” inherent in that endorsement, must have featured in the applicant’s social media profile for a cumulative period of at least two months since that date; seven or more of the applicants’ photos on social media from the protests must show them wearing a keffiyeh, waving the flag of either Palestine or a militant Islamist group; and the applicant must demonstrate fluency in the slogans of the protests, including but limited to “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” “Globalize the Intifada,” and “Stop the Genocide.”
Pulitzer Prize Distracts From Systemic New York Times Bias
What Wasn’t Included
As interesting as what was included in The New York Times’s seven-article submission to the Pulitzer committee is what didn’t make the cut.

For example, the investigation into Hamas sexual violence and rape on October 7, “Screams Without Words,” did not feature in the Pulitzer package despite being the first mainstream media article to expose these atrocities to the wider world.

The article was subsequently attacked by anti-Israel media and activists who feared that it would promote a “pro-Israel” narrative and give further justification for Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas.

New York Times staff also sought to delegitimize the article in leaked internal arguments, contributing to the rape denial spread by Hamas sympathizers.

Pulitzer Gives Legitimacy to Poor Journalism?
Seven stories don’t adequately sum up The New York Times’s overall reporting since October 7. The Pulitzer committee stated it had awarded the prize, in part, for coverage of the “Israeli military’s sweeping, deadly response in Gaza.”

As far as the general public is concerned, the paper is being rewarded, not for several submitted pieces, but for the breadth of its reporting.

And that reporting leaves a lot to be desired. A look through HonestReporting’s website and social media feeds over the past several months reveals no end of problems concerning New York Times coverage, including:

Israel Accused of Al-Ahli Hospital Strike
“Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say,” blared The New York Times’s initial summary in the aftermath of what was shortly proven to be an Islamic Jihad rocket strike on the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.

The New York Times jumped at the opportunity to lay the blame at Israel’s door, including by parroting the claim in a subsequent headline that 500 people had died without even bothering to mention that Hamas controls the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Photographer Who Infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7 Honored in Reuters’ Pulitzer Win
Reuters said Qudih had no prior knowledge of the attack and that the agency didn’t embed photographers with Hamas.

But the fact Qudih could freely capture gunmen without being threatened suggests that, at a minimum, he had their tacit approval to document and disseminate their actions.

As revealed two months ago by Israel’s Channel 12 news magazine Uvda, the documentation and distribution of the October 7 atrocities was part of Hamas’ vicious plan.

Did Reuters have no qualms about including in its Pulitzer nomination, someone whose professional and ethical conduct had been called into question?

And didn’t the Pulitzer Board conduct background checks on the recipients of a top journalism prize?

Probably not, considering the board also granted a special citation to “the courageous work” of journalists covering the war under fire in Gaza, ignoring the fact that some of them had been moonlighting for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It is telling, however, that Reuters’ winning portfolio didn’t include any of Qudih’s problematic border images, nor any taken by his colleague, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa.

The latter’s photo of a lynched Israeli soldier being dragged out of the tank had previously been featured by Reuters in its photo galleries throughout the war.

Therefore, while we deplore the inclusion of Qudih in the winning Pulitzer portfolio, the absence of tainted border images would indicate some sort of self-reflection by Reuters. If images that were previously deemed by Reuters to be among its top photos of the year are no longer considered to be worthy of submission for awards, this represents a positive development.

It can only be hoped that Reuters recognizes that the photos it published by Gazan photojournalists who accompanied Hamas across the border are ethically flawed and should not be rewarded with a Pulitzer or any other industry honor.
Pulitzer Prize honors gripping photo of October 7 massacre of Israeli elders
Qudih, who documented, among other things, the capture of an Israeli tank and the taking of Israeli captives, claimed his house was bombed just days after an HonestReporting investigation was published, showing him accompanying the terrorists, and raising the question of whether he had early knowledge of Hamas' intention to attack Israel.

However, Qudih’s selected work for the award was actually photographed in Gaza on October 25 and described as " A man holds his two nephews as Palestinians search for victims of an Israeli strike on a residential building in Gaza City.”

Israeli photographers Amir Cohen and Ronen Zvulun were also given the Pulitzer prize as part of the Reuters team, for their photographs from Israel during and after the Hamas massacre. The Pulitzer Committee praised journalists covering the Middle East, noting that "in harrowing conditions, an extraordinary number of journalists died in an effort to tell the stories of Palestinians and others in Gaza."

The Pulitzer Prize was also awarded to the controversial novel by Jewish author Nathan Thrall, 44, who lives in Jerusalem and whose work often criticizes Israel. The book, "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy," which was published a few days before October 7, focuses on the efforts of a Palestinian father to uncover information about his son following a bus accident. The prize committee described the work as " A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”

Pulitzer Prizes Administrator Marjorie Miller told Ynet that Reuters had willingly shared the HonestReporting website’s report upon entering the competition for review by the award committee, adding that details of the decision process for the winners were confidential and so no further information could be added.

Reuters said in response to a query from Ynet that the news agency was committed to reporting news in an objective, fair, and independent way, adding that they deny any allegations of Reuters staff knowing about Hamas’ planned October 7 attack ahead of time.

Reuters also addressed Awad's winning photo and said that a journalist’s job is to report important news as it breaks and to give first accounts of incidents as they happen. They added this was also true in a war zone and that they remain committed to reporting from both Gaza and Israel as is the moral obligation of the free press.


Meta reviewing whether ‘From the river to the sea’ is acceptable speech
The social media company Meta is adjudicating whether a key phrase used by pro-Palestinian activists constitutes acceptable speech.

The company’s Oversight Board, an independent body tasked with reviewing Meta’s content moderation decisions, has taken up the question as it reviews three cases involving posts that use the phrase “From the river to the sea.”

The phrase has been used by Palestinian nationalist movements for decades, including by Hamas, and pro-Palestinian activists say it is a call for liberation. Israel and Jewish groups view it as advocating Israel’s destruction. It has been condemned in congressional votes and investigated in multiple instances by the United States Department of Education.

The slogan has appeared frequently in pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel social media posts during the Israel-Hamas war, which began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 252.

Some of those posts on Facebook and Instagram have been reported as potential violations of Meta’s policies, according to the Oversight Board. On Tuesday, the board announced a process to determine whether the company should create a specific policy for “From the river to the sea.”
Sen. Van Hollen to keynote gathering panning Israel for journalist casualties of Gaza war
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) will be the featured speaker at an event this week focused on the “challenges of covering Palestine” that accuses Israel of killing “an unprecedented number” of Palestinian journalists “during its campaign in Gaza.”

Van Hollen will deliver the opening address at the Arab Center Washington DC’s gathering at the National Press Club on Thursday entitled, “Covering Palestine: A Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Symposium.” Following Van Hollen’s remarks, which will be delivered virtually, the conference will hold panel discussions on “Western media coverage of … the war in Gaza” and the risks faced by Palestinian journalists covering the conflict.

Van Hollen has advocated for accountability on behalf of Abu Akleh since her murder in May of 2022. An autopsy conducted by An-Najah National University found that Abu Akleh died from a bullet wound to the back of the head, though Israel has denied accusations from the Palestinian Authority, which turned down Israel’s offer to conduct a joint investigation, that she was killed intentionally by the Israel Defense Forces.

The IDF said in September of 2022 that there was a “high possibility” that Abu Akleh was “accidentally hit” by Israeli bullets but dismissed the notion that criminal charges could ever be brought because it remains a “possibility” that she “was hit by bullets fired by armed Palestinian gunmen.”

“Two years after the killing of acclaimed Palestinian-American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank and as an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli military during its campaign in Gaza, this symposium will focus on the challenges of covering Palestine,” the event description reads.

“The panels in this conference will focus on both the journalists at risk on the ground as well as an assessment of Western media coverage of Palestine and, in particular, the war on Gaza.”

Among those appearing at the event are Al Jazeera’s Laila Al-Arian and MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin.
Twenty-two years on, the BBC again promotes the notion of ‘war crimes’ in Jenin
A video embedded into the written report shows a clip from the filmed version which repeats the same “not clear what it is” claim.

What that footage actually shows is Basel Abu al-Wafa trying to ignite a pipe bomb with a lighter. Even the PFLP-linked anti-Israel NGO DCI-Palestine reported at the time that Abu al-Wafa “was allegedly attempting to throw a homemade explosive device at the time Israeli forces shot and killed him”.

Notably, the fact that – as reported by Reuters and others – Hamas claimed Basel Abu al-Wafa as a member of that terrorist organisation and he was buried in a Hamas flag is completely absent from Yeung’s account.

In addition to that story about a 15-year-old Hamas operative being shot while trying to attack IDF forces with a pipe bomb as one of his friends filmed it on his phone and an 8-year-old standing a few meters behind him apparently having been hit by one of the bullets, Yeung and her colleagues have more tales to tell.

“With violence having surged in the West Bank in the months since Hamas’s attack on Israel from Gaza on 7 October, the BBC has also found evidence of Palestinian homes being vandalised with graffiti, Palestinian civilians threatened with weapons and told to leave the territory for neighbouring Jordan, and the possible mutilation of the body of a Palestinian gunman.”

That “evidence” is in fact unverified accounts from local Palestinians which the BBC is obviously happy to promote on multiple platforms regardless of its inability to confirm the claims.

“The BBC witnessed a 45-hour military operation by Israel in Tulkarm refugee camp in January 2024, targeting an armed group known locally as the Resistance [sic].

Afterwards, several Palestinians told us they had been threatened by soldiers at gunpoint and told to move to neighbouring Jordan. The IDF has said it will review any complaints about civilians being threatened.”

Obviously of no interest to Yeung and her colleagues is the fact that during that counter-terrorism operation:
“…the IDF says troops scanned around 1,000 buildings and located more than 400 explosive devices, and seized 27 weapons and other military equipment.

Five explosive manufacturing labs and four sites used by local terror operatives to observe Israeli forces using surveillance cameras were also located and destroyed, the IDF says.

Engineering vehicles uncovered and destroyed dozens of explosives hidden under the roads of the camp, the IDF says.”

Throughout their article Yeung and her colleagues use second-hand quotes from unidentified “former Israeli soldiers” without clarification of whether or not they belong to a political NGO such as ‘Breaking the Silence’ which often contributes to BBC content.
Guardian plays down antisemitism within campus anti-Israel movement
One of the more underappreciated institutional pathologies at the Guardian is their glaring lack of self-awareness, in that they not only deny that their coverage of Israel and Jews fuels racism against Jews, but actually fancy themselves uniquely capable of objectively reporting on and analysing (‘real’) antisemitism.

Thus, editors deemed Chris McGreal, whose malign obsession with Israel and ‘Jewish power’ has been documented here for nearly 15 years, worthy of determining ‘if’ there’s been expressions of antisemitism during the anti-Israel protests at college campuses across the US.

In fairness, his piece, (“How pervasive is antisemitism on US campuses? A look at the language of the protests”, May 3) isn’t quite as horrible as other Guardian whitewashes of antisemitism. However, that’s an extremely low bar. Though McGreal finds some antisemitism within the campus encampment protests, his predictable conclusion is that the fear expressed by Jewish students has been way overblown, and that most of the pro-Palestinian protesters ‘don’t have an antisemitic bone in their body’.

McGreal, who focuses most of his piece on the protests at Columbia University in New York City, writes that “it’s hard to deny that there have been antisemitic incidents on the campus, including the targeting of students, probably Jewish, called ‘Nazi bitches’ and told to ‘-go back to Poland’. He then notes that “a female Jewish student described a masked pro-Palestinian demonstrator confronting her as she walked across campus one evening” who “menacingly demanded to know if she was a Zionist” after which “she stopped wearing a Star of David necklace.”

He doesn’t, however, explain the broader problem faced by Jewish students at Columbia, and on other campuses, such as UCLA: that the encampments have forbidden Jews – unless they’re anti-Zionists – from entering.


French PM attacks the left for giving Israel ‘moral lessons’ during Gaza war
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal attacked France’s left-wing politicians on Monday night for their criticism of Israel amid the war in Gaza.

As a guest of honor at at an annual dinner held by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — an organization that lobbies the government on Jewish issues — Attal said the far-left should be ashamed for encouraging the stark rise in antisemitism in the last seven months because “it takes us back to the dark times when we saw that such actions can lead to a great disaster.”

The dinner took place only two days after an Anti-Defamation League report showed that France had experienced the highest rise in antisemitic attacks of any country in 2023, with incidents near-quadrupling compared to the previous year.

Attal, who is Jewish, began his speech by telling attendees about a document he had framed in his office that was given to his grandmother Jeanine Weil in 1941 when she removed her yellow Jude star at a police station.

“This document reminds me of the infamy that our country committed by surrendering and being complicit and guilty of antisemitism because, in that hour, our country turned its back on its history and attacked its own,” he said, adding that it was also a reminder that hate is “an infernal machine” that erases “every trace of humanity.”
Zadie Smith has failed the Palestine purity test
So the ‘pro-Palestine’ mob has now rounded on author Zadie Smith. ‘Shibboleth’, an essay on American students’ protests against the war in Gaza, has been loudly denounced as a genocidal tract.

Published in this Saturday’s New Yorker, Smith’s essay is, at first glance, an unlikely target for the keffiyeh-sporting crowd. She explicitly expresses support for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling it a ‘potential reality and an ethical necessity’. She also celebrates those sons and daughters of privilege currently draped in Palestine flags and encamped on lawns across America’s universities. These protesters are the heirs of the student radicals of the late 1960s and early 1970s, she (wrongly) claims. Apparently, for their willingness to put their own bodies and futures on the line in support of a just cause, ‘they deserve our support and praise’.

But Smith does something else in the essay, too. Something that far too many ‘pro-Palestine’ types refuse to do. She dares to acknowledge the fear felt by many Jewish students right now, faced by hostile mobs calling them ‘Zionists’ and telling them to keep their distance. She also dares to express ‘concern for the dreadful situation of the hostages’ who were taken from Israel seven months ago by Hamas. And she dares to challenge those who minimise the rape of Israeli women during Hamas’s pogrom on 7 October last year.

For this – for gently drawing attention to the anti-Semitic elements of the pro-Palestine campaign, and for expressing sympathy with Israelis as well as Palestinians – she has been monstered by academics, authors and leftists.
The poison of Islamic sectarianism
It seems the victory of George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election in February – a contest he described as a ‘referendum on Gaza’ – was a foretaste of this new sectarianism. The Workers Party of Britain sought to appeal to Muslim voters as Muslims first, Rochdale residents second. Galloway addressed them not as citizens of the UK, electing a member of parliament to pass and scrutinise our laws, but as members of a grieving ummah, to send a message to the ‘Zionist’ enemy and her Western allies. In last week’s elections, we saw this replicated across much of England, with Palestine flags appearing on candidates’ flyers where pledges about public services would ordinarily be.

Of course, this identity politicking is not entirely new. The Labour Party is simply finding out the hard way that other parties can also target Muslim voters and aim to gin up a sense of group-based grievance more ruthlessly and effectively. Independent candidates have been particularly adept at this. However, one genuine surprise of last week’s elections was the number of hardline Muslim candidates fielded by the Green Party.

Of course, political parties can field whichever candidates they like, and voters are free to accept or reject them. Yet it is hard to imagine that the maddeningly woke Green Party would have put forward a candidate like Mothin Ali if it was not making a crude attempt to chase the so-called Muslim vote. This is a candidate who has defended Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October as an act of resistance. He also took part in an intimidation campaign against Leeds University’s Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Zacheria Deutsch, who, as an Israeli citizen and IDF reservist, was called up to serve in Gaza last year. ‘You should be protecting students from this kind of animal’, Ali raged, ‘because if he’s willing to kill people over there, how do you know he’s not going to kill your students over here?’. Deutsch has since been advised by police to go into hiding.

Two newly elected Green councillors in Bristol have even caught the eye of Lord Mann, the UK government’s adviser on anti-Semitism. Mohamed Makawi shared posts with references to the ‘Zionist enemy police’ and dismissed the 7 October terror attack as an ‘American Zionist lie’. Abdul Malik appears to have shared a video that describes Israel as a ‘cancer that should be eradicated’, though the Green Party denies this. Thus, thanks to its flirtation with Islamic identity politics, a party most people associate with recycling and veganism, has quickly become a haven for Israel-loathing cranks.

Here we see the sickness of the new sectarianism laid bare. It is bad for Muslims who are no longer treated as our fellow citizens, with interests and concerns that transcend religious divides. This identity politicking reduces Muslim voters to a homogenous bloc that must be appealed to on the basis of its supposed group interests, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not casting their vote purely on Gaza. And it is bad for our politics as a whole, as it invariably promotes and indulges in reactionary tropes about Israel, as if this were somehow representative of broader Muslim opinion. This is, in itself, a form of anti-Muslim bigotry. And it really must be confronted.
Muslim Vote fringe group hands Keir Starmer list of 18 'dangerous' demands before it stops campaign to unseat Labour MPs - including allowing Islamic prayer in schools and public sector Israel boycott, and apologising for 'greenlighting Gaza genocide'
Sir Keir Starmer has been told to apologise for 'greenlighting' Israel's 'genocide' in Gaza and allow Islamic prayer in all schools by a fringe group threatening to stand against Labour MPs at the general election.

Muslim Vote has handed the opposition leader an extraordinary list of 18 'dangerous' demands that he must agree to carry out, or it plans to try to scupper his hopes of taking power.

The little-known group has suggested it could target 55 MPs who have failed to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

It comes after Labour lost control of Oldham Council in last week's local election, a loss partly blamed on Sir Keir's position on Gaza.

He is facing calls from the left of the party to take a more partisan line on the conflict, with Israel today beginning a bloody assault on Rafah, a town on the Egypt border crammed full of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Among Muslim Vote's other demands is that Sir Keir support a public sector boycott of Israel, sanctions and a travel ban against senior politicians, severe UK military ties and recognise the state of Palestine.

Its domestic policy demands include ensuring Muslim pupils can pray at school, ditching a new Government definition of extremism and guaranteeing 'Sharia-compliant' pensions are available in every workplace.
MEMRI: London-Based Al-Qaeda Ideologue: Suppression Of The 'University Intifada' In The U.S. Reflects Its Nature As A Country Based On Terrorism And Genocide; Islam Will Bury The American Empire Underfoot After It Collapses On Its Own
On May 3, 2024, the "Nahar Al-Da'wah [River of Preaching]" Telegram channel, which is affiliated with London-based Egyptian Al-Qaeda ideologue Hani Al-Siba'i, shared a video of a five-minute lecture by Al-Siba'i about the pro-Palestine student protests that have been taking place at American universities and about "the Americans' philosophy of genocide."

In the video, Al-Siba'i said that America is a "rogue state" that defends the "cancerous entity" that is Israel, as well as Israel's "crimes" against the Palestinian people. He said that America does this because it itself was established by means of genocide and has carried out crimes against humanity. He called on Muslims to "lift up their heads" and not be deterred by the "bewitching power" of the United States. He also said that Islam has buried many great empires and will do so also with the American empire, which he predicted will collapse on its own due to internal destructive elements.

Al-Siba'i described the pro-Palestine student protests in the United States as "the university intifada," and he condemned the "demonization" of the students in American media, as well as the mobilization of American institutions to suppress and silence the protests, which he said are non-violent. He denied assertions that the student protestors are antisemitic, explaining that they are rising up against the injustice being done to the Palestinian people. In addition, he justified the calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and for ties with Israeli universities to be cut off, claiming that these ties undermine the universities' independence and turn them into a tool in the hands of Israel.

According to Al-Siba'i, the U.S. defends "the cancerous entity that was planted in Palestine [i.e. Israel]" and its "crimes" against the Palestinian people because it has also carried out crimes against humanity and was established by means of genocide against 400 Indian nations that had previously lived on the continent before the Europeans invaded it. He said that the genocide of the Indians included massacres, burning, and the deliberate spreading of diseases like cholera and smallpox. He claimed that this was all done because of religious beliefs that dictated that white people are superior and that there is a need to purify humanity of the "lesser races." In a reference to a similar statement made in 1963 by prominent African-American activist Malcolm X, Al-Siba'i said that African-Americans are "house negroes" serving their white masters.
I exposed new councillor's tirade against rabbi, but when I warned the Greens they just ignored it
When I stumbled upon the social media feeds of Green Party election candidate Mothin Ali, I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was mid-February, and the Daily Mail was investigating an anti-Semitic hate campaign that had forced Leeds University's Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, into hiding.

Rabbi Deutsch is an Israeli national. So, like almost all of his countrymen under the age of 40, he is required to serve as a reservist in its armed forces.

Following the October 7 terror attacks, he had therefore been called upon to temporarily return to his homeland.

He spent three months with his regiment in the Israeli Defence Forces before returning to the UK in January.

This fact became public a few weeks later. There followed an appalling online hate campaign, which – in turn – resulted in more than 300 highly threatening messages being sent to the family home where he lived with his wife Nava and their two small children.

'Tell that Jewish son of a b***h we're coming for him,' went one of the more sinister late-night telephone calls, picked up by Nava at midnight.

'We're coming to his house and we're going to kill him in his house and you as well, you f*****g racist b***h, s**g.'

Another anonymous caller said: 'We are going to get you, we're going to get your husband and we are going to get you as well, love. It's as simple as.

'How dare you come to Leeds and expect the Muslims not to do 'owt, when all you lot have been doing is killing innocent children?'

A third caller, who like the two previous ones was male and spoke with a Yorkshire accent, promised: 'Us Muslims are coming for you, you dirty Zionist mother****ers.'

Rabbi Deutsch and his family responded to the menacing calls – which included several threats to rape Nava and torture their children – by going into
Newly elected Green councillor apologises for October 7 anti-Israel tweets
A newly elected Green Party councillor who defended the right of “indigenous people to fight back” after October 7 has apologised for any “upset" caused by his comments on Palestine.

Mothin Ali shouted “Allahu Akbar” and declared his victory was “for the people of Gaza” after winning Gipton and Harehills ward in Leeds last week.

The 42-year-old has now been condemned by the Board of Deputies for appearing to celebrate the Hamas attack against Israel in which hundreds of civilians were massacred.

On October 7, Ali wrote on X/Twitter: "White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!"

In videos posted online following the attack, the accountant said Israel would, “use the pretext of the fightback by Hamas fighters or supposedly Hamas fighters this morning” to attack Gaza.

People should “support the right of indigenous people to fight back,” he claimed, before adding: “They are not victims, they are occupiers, they are colonialists, they are European colonialists…

"It’s one of the last European colonies in the world, and that’s why the European people don’t want to let it go. They use the weapon of antisemitism so effectively that anyone who criticises Israel is labelled as antisemitic.”

Ali also claimed: “Every single person, every single people have a right to fight back, every single people have a right to live free of occupiers.

“That includes people who are brown, that includes people who are Muslim, that includes people who are Arab. Just because they are brown and Arab doesn't mean they don't have a right to fight back.”
How the accountant elected as a Green councillor presented himself as a campaigner for local unity... but was quite the opposite
Leaders of Britain's Jewish community yesterday condemned the Green Party as 'breathtakingly foolish, dangerous and insensitive' for having stood by Mr Ali and demanded his immediate suspension.

In an open letter to co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, the chairman of Leeds Jewish Representative Council, Simon Myerson KC, wrote that Mr Ali had a 'substantial history of views which are concerning to the Jewish community'.

Accusing the Greens of 'hypocrisy', Mr Myerson said it was wrong for the party to continue to associate itself with Mr Ali.

He accused Mr Ali of attempting to justify 'rape, murder and kidnap' and using 'anti-Semitic tropes'. 'These matters do, I suggest, call the Green Party's own integrity into question,' Mr Myerson wrote.

He added: 'The deliberate exploitation of a particular issue which is never going to be addressed by the election of a local councillor as a major factor in that councillor's election campaign is nakedly opportunistic.'

Saying the party had 'known about Mr Ali's views for a considerable time', he insisted it was time to act and 'formally suspend Mr Ali as a Green Party member'.

Claudia Mendoza, head of the Jewish Leadership Council, added: 'Mr Ali's record speaks for itself and if the Green Party is serious about dealing with anti-Semitism rather than just paying lip service to it in meetings with community leaders, action will be taken.'

A spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said it was 'appalled' by Mr Ali appearing to 'celebrate and attempt to justify the October 7 mass terror attack on Israel', saying the Greens had 'serious questions to answer'. The party has failed to respond to this newspaper's requests for comment since Mr Ali's acceptance speech emerged.

But a spokesman told the Daily Telegraph: 'The Green Party is investigating issues drawn to our attention in relation to Councillor Mothin Ali, so cannot comment further. However, we are clear that we never support anything that extols violence.'

Mr Ali has also been approached for comment. He has said he has been inundated with death threats himself, insisting his video about the Leeds rabbi 'has absolutely nothing to do with violence'.
BC Woman Arrested Over Alleged Hate Speech Takes Part in Webinar With Hamas Official
A leader of the pro-Palestinian activist group Samidoun, arrested last week by Vancouver police in connection with an alleged hate crime, took part in an online discussion with a spokesman of the terrorist group Hamas this week.

Charlotte Kates, who serves as international co-ordinator for Samidoun, took part in a May 5 discussion with Osama Hamdan. Mr. Hamdan has been a media spokesman for Hamas since the Oct. 7 mass killings in Israel and was formerly a representative for the group in Lebanon.

Ms. Kates spoke of her brush with law enforcement earlier this month in the video, saying she had been arrested by the Vancouver police for “giving a speech that was unequivocally in support of the Palestinian resistance.”

Ms. Kates was arrested as part of a police investigation into a potential violation of hate speech laws after she praised the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas as “heroic and brave.” The attacks killed around 1,200 people in Israel, the majority of which were civilians.

Ms. Kates was banned from attending any protests, rallies, or assemblies until Oct. 8 as a result of her arrest, and is facing undisclosed charges, according to a statement from Samidoun.
At Milken conference Jordan’s Queen Rania slams Israel, minimizes Hamas’ role in conflict
While Jordanian King Abdullah II met President Joe Biden for lunch at the White House on Monday, his wife, Queen Rania Al Abdullah, was thousands of miles away speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills.

Despite delivering a series of recent speeches and TV interviews slamming Israel and minimizing Hamas’ role in the current conflict, Rania, whose father was Palestinian, began her conversation with a plea for humanity and humility.

“If there’s anything I want to achieve, it’s for people to come out of this thinking that there is more to this issue, that it is actually complex, and that it needs to be approached with a lot of nuance, and for us to try to find the third way,” she said. “You don’t have to be either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. There needs to be a middle ground.”

But the rest of her 30-minute conversation with MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi, which took place in front of some of the biggest names in business, blamed Israel for the war in Gaza and for prolonging the decades-old conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

“When we look at whose fault it is, and this cycle or that cycle, we can keep going back and forth,” she said. “But it all comes back down to an illegal occupation. You want safety and security? We need to end the occupation.”

Rania didn’t mention the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks until the final part of her remarks, nor did she speak about Hamas’ role in planning and executing the attacks. She also didn’t speak about the more than 130 remaining hostages in Gaza.

“There was outrage over October 7, as there should be,” Rania said. “But why isn’t there outrage about the number of people who are being killed now? Why is it okay for some people to have human rights while others are deprived of it?”

She brought up the claims Israel and the United States have made that Hamas uses civilians in Gaza as “human shields,” but instead of criticizing the terror group, Rania argued that Israel is the one using human shields by building settlements in the West Bank.
Israeli security forces conclude 20-hour counterterror op in Tulkarem
Israeli security forces concluded a major counterterrorism operation in the Samaria city of Tulkarem on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The operation, which lasted for over 20 hours and included IDF soldiers as well as Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Israel Border Police officers, saw one armed terrorist killed and six suspects arrested.

Forces searched more than 60 buildings, seizing terrorists’ weapons and destroying three workshops for the production of explosives, the army said.

As part of the counterterror operation in Tulkarem, IDF combat engineers worked to rip up roads under which explosive devices had been buried to kill and injure Israeli forces.

Tulkarem, a town east of Netanya that borders the Green Line, is located only eight miles from Israel’s densely populated coastal plain.

In the seven months since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 cross-border terror attacks from the Gaza Strip, approximately 4,000 wanted terrorists have been arrested by Israeli forces throughout Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, including some 1,700 believed to be associated with Hamas.

In recent days, Israeli forces carried out arrests in Huwara near Nablus, El-Bireh near Ramallah and Ad-Dhahiriya near Hebron, the IDF announced on Tuesday. During the latter raid, a suspect was arrested who is believed to have aided the terrorist responsible for a deadly March 31 stabbing.


PMW: Hamas controls ATMs, cash, and the humanitarian aid trucks
Hamas’ control of the residents in the Gaza Strip seems to know no limits. A PA TV reporter in Gaza reported that Hamas now also controls the ATMs and that residents can’t get cash to purchase goods:
Official PA TV reporter in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza: “The residents are in a difficult mental state due to the lack of cash. We as PA public employees cannot receive our salary that has arrived in the banks because the people with influence are acting as if the ATMs are their family’s private property, and the armed people (i.e., Hamas) are doing the same. We have no possibility of reaching the ATMs. There is a lack of cash in the markets. There are goods being offered at reasonable prices, but there is no cash to purchase them.”

[Official PA TV, April 24, 2024]

Similarly, the PA TV journalist reported earlier that Hamas also controls what happens with the 150 humanitarian aid trucks that arrive daily with food and other necessities, and that only 20 of these trucks reach the general population:
Official PA TV reporter in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza: “When we speak about the entry of more than 150 [humanitarian aid] trucks [a day to Gaza], and what is [actually] distributed is 20 trucks, then there is a missing link. Some of those with power in the Gaza Strip (i.e., Hamas) control the number of trucks, where these trucks are arriving, the destination of the trucks, and the people who enjoy the contents of these trucks.”

[Official PA TV News, April 14, 2024]




IAEA head decries ‘unsatisfactory’ cooperation after visit to Iran
United Nations atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Tuesday decried “completely unsatisfactory” cooperation from Tehran after returning from Iran where he urged leaders to adopt “concrete” measures to address concerns over its nuclear program.

Grossi’s visit came at a time of heightened regional tensions and with his International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticizing Iran for lack of cooperation on inspections and other outstanding issues.

“The present state is completely unsatisfactory for me. We are almost at an impasse and this needs to be changed,” Grossi told reporters at the airport in Vienna, where the IAEA is based.

He said there was no “magic wand” to solve a “very, very complex set of issues,” while he pressed the Islamic Republic to “deliver very soon.”

“But of course, for me and also I would say for the international community, there is a need to have some results sooner rather than later,” he said.

‘Tangible measures’
Earlier on Tuesday, at a news conference in the Iranian city of Isfahan, Grossi said he had proposed to Iranian officials that they “focus on the very concrete, very practical and tangible measures that can be implemented in order to accelerate” cooperation. International Atomic Energy Organization Director General Rafael Grossi, left, and head of Iran’s atomic energy department Mohammad Eslami shake hands at the conclusion of their joint press conference after their meeting in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Grossi held talks with senior Iranian officials including Atomic Energy Organization head Mohammad Eslami, and spoke at Iran’s first International Conference on Nuclear Science and Technology held in Isfahan.

Grossi insisted on the need to “settle differences” on the nuclear issue while the Middle East was going through “difficult times,” particularly the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Sometimes, political conditions pose obstacles to full-fledged cooperation” between Iran and the international community, Grossi told reporters.

Grossi said a March 2023 agreement with Iran was “still valid,” but required more “substance.”
Iran's capacity to move oil reliant on Malaysian providers, US official says
The United States sees Iran's capacity to move its oil as reliant on service providers based in Malaysia, with oil being transferred near Singapore and throughout the region, a senior United States Treasury official said on Tuesday.

Treasury is increasing its focus on financing for militant groups routed through Southeast Asia, including through fundraising efforts and illicit sales of Iranian oil.

The official told reporters the United States was trying to prevent Malaysia from becoming a jurisdiction where the Palestinian militant group Hamas could both fundraise and then move money.

The official said the United States saw Iranian oil being transferred near Singapore and throughout the region.

US trying to prevent Malaysia to be jurisdiction where Hamas can move money

Nelson told reporters the United States was trying to prevent Malaysia from becoming a jurisdiction where the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas could both fundraise and then move money.

He said the United States saw Iranian oil being transferred near Singapore and throughout the region.

Last December, Treasury imposed sanctions on four Malaysia-based companies it accused of being fronts supporting Iran's production of drones.


American Airlines Ejects 17 Year Old Orthodox Jew From Flight Due To The Actions Of An Unrelated Orthodox Jewish Passenger
On Sunday, I read about an incident on American flight 4447 on the DansDeals Forums that seemed too strange to be true. A veteran poster alleged that his brother was kicked off of an American Airlines flight from Cleveland due to being visibly Jewish.

People often send me stories to write about and I’ve reported on many over the years, though I don’t cover the majority of them. However, this one seemed like it was worth investigating.

Over the past 2 days I’ve spoken with 2 passengers who were removed from the flight, Reuven (Reuvi) Scheinerman and Yehudah Roffman. Reuvi is a minor, so I also spoke with Reuvi’s father Motti.

Were you on AA flight 4447 on 5/5? Please email Dan@DansDeals.com to share what you saw.

Usually, I stick to stories that have video or at least audio evidence, as otherwise it is only a “he said, she said” situation. In this case, the 2 yeshiva students only had kosher flip phones (non-smartphones with only calling and SMS capabilities, which is very common among yeshiva students), so this story is based on their allegations and what Reuvi discussed with his father that evening. Despite the lack of video, I found their testimonies to be credible and compelling.
JetBlue Cancels Jewish Passenger’s Ticket Over ‘Free Palestine’ Pin Dispute
A recent incident aboard a JetBlue flight has sparked controversy after a Jewish passenger’s ticket was canceled following a dispute over a flight attendant’s “Free Palestine” pin.

Paul Faust, a passenger known for his staunch support of Israel, raised concerns when he noticed a flight attendant wearing a “Free Palestine” pin on her uniform.

Feeling uncomfortable, Faust requested that the flight attendant remove the pin.

However, upon his arrival at his destination, Faust was met by an inspector who promptly arrested him at the gate for allegedly causing a disturbance during the flight. To his surprise, Faust discovered that his future tickets with JetBlue had been canceled without explanation.
Bipartisan House coalition pushes for added funding for antisemitism envoy
A bipartisan push is underway in the House of Representatives to increase funding for the U.S. State Department’s antisemitism envoy office.

Members of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, including Reps. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Kathy Manning (D-N.C.), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Susan Wild (D-Pa.), David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), announced a request on Monday for an increase of $1.25 million for the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.

A total of 76 Congress members backed the effort. Funding for the office is currently set at $1.75 million.

“The spike in antisemitic incidents around the world is deeply troubling,” said Meng, who represents the 6th Congressional District in Queens, N.Y., and has seen an increase in such activity. “These hateful and disgusting acts have no place anywhere in our society and providing additional resources to the Special Envoy would greatly boost our efforts to combat this evil whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.”

The request was sent in a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs.

The additional funds would “help the special envoy better fulfill its mission of developing and implementing policies and projects to fight antisemitism across the globe, which was already on the rise, but has surged since Hamas’s 10/7 attacks,” according to a statement released by the effort’s leaders.
Swastika arm band at NYC tailor sparks fury — but shop says employee didn’t know what it meant
A hateful Nazi swastika that was hanging in plain view at a popular Upper East Side tailor shop has sparked fury among customers and neighbors.

But the store’s management says the whole thing was a stich-up.

Ignacio’s Tailor shop on East 60th Street issued a groveling apology, and told The Post an unwitting employee who didn’t understand what the symbol meant accepted the white shirt with a swastika armband for dry cleaning.

When managers were alerted to the garment they called the cops, and then tossed it.

“For me, I feel like it’s a hate situation. It’s the first time we had this situation… they want to hurt the business,” Jorge Hernandez, a manager at Ignacio’s, said.
Booking.com removes properties from website after the owner refuses to accept Jewish customers
Two Israelis had their Bed & Breakfast (B&B) reservation canceled on Booking.com since the owner of the property insisted that he would not let the location to Jews, Israeli media reported on Sunday.

Two weeks ago, two Israelis were asked by the owner of a B&B establishment in Sjenica (Serbia) where they are from, when he learned they were from Israel, he quickly wrote to them, “Sorry, Jews are not welcome in our apartment, please cancel your reservation, thank you.”

The organization Btsalmo (In His Image) - an organization that claims to work to protect human rights and stop injustice against people, and Jews in particular - fought the decision of the B&B owner.

Btsalmo sent a letter to Booking.com and demanded all properties of the Serbian B&B be removed from the site. Combatting antisemitism

In the letter, the CEO of Btsalmo organization Shay Glick noted Booking.com’s policy regarding discrimination and hate, which the website prohibited, including antisemitic comments made to customers.

The website responded to the letter by removing the relevant properties, due to the owner’s violation of the company’s code of conduct.


Why Taiwan Stands with Israel
On Tuesday, representatives of Hamas met with their counterparts from Fatah—the faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) once led by Yasir Arafat that now governs parts of the West Bank—in Beijing to discuss possible reconciliation. While it is unlikely that these talks will yield any more progress than the many previous rounds, they constitute a significant step in China’s increasing attempts to involve itself in the Middle East on the side of Israel’s enemies.

By contrast, writes Tuvia Gering, Taiwan has been quick and consistent in its condemnations of Hamas and Iran and its expressions of sympathy with Israel:

Support from Taipei goes beyond words. Taiwan’s appointee in Tel Aviv and de-facto ambassador, Abby Lee, has been busy aiding hostage families, adopting the most affected kibbutzim in southern Israel, and volunteering with farmers. Taiwan recently pledged more than half a million dollars to Israel for critical initiatives, including medical and communications supplies for local municipalities. This follows earlier aid from Taiwan to an organization helping Israeli soldiers and families immediately after the October 7 attack.

The reasons why are not hard to fathom:

In many ways, Taiwan sees a reflection of itself in Israel—two vibrant democracies facing threats from hostile neighbors. Both nations wield substantial economic and technological prowess, and both heavily depend on U.S. military exports and diplomacy. Taipei also sees Israel as a “role model” for what Taiwan should aspire to be, citing its unwavering determination and capabilities to defend itself.

On a deeper level, Taiwanese leaders seem to view Israel’s war with Hamas and Iran as an extension of a greater struggle between democracy and autocracy.

Gering urges Israel to reciprocate these expressions of friendship and to take into account that “China has been going above and beyond to demonize the Jewish state in international forums.” Above all, he writes, Jerusalem should “take a firmer stance against China’s support for Hamas and Iran-backed terrorism, exposing the hypocrisy and repression that underpin its vision for a new global order.”
Israel-founded cyber unicorn Wiz raises $1 billion, soaring to $12 billion valuation
Four years after it was founded, American-Israeli cloud cybersecurity unicorn Wiz is valued at a staggering $12 billion, after raising $1 billion in its latest private funding round announced on Tuesday.

The capital injection will be used for future merger and acquisition efforts, talent recruitment and product development, Wiz said. In the last funding round in February 2023, Wiz raised $300 million at a $10 billion valuation. To date, the cyber unicorn has secured a total of $1.9 billion from investors.

“2024 is the year of consolidation – for Wiz, and the industry at large,” said Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport. “Our growth trajectory will continue to be aided by strategic acquisitions that propel us forward and enable us to cover more ground in less time.”

Earlier this year, Wiz snapped up Israeli cyber startup Gem Security for a reported $350 million and at the end of 2023, it bought Tel Aviv startup Rafft for an undisclosed sum.

Wiz, which says that its platform can secure everything developers build and run in the cloud, was established just as the COVID-19 pandemic started gaining pace around the world, sending entire enterprises and workers online and spurring a huge migration wave to cloud-based servers.
Eden Golan: Israel’s Eurovision entry determined to perform in the face of death threats
Eden Golan, Israel’s 2024 Eurovision Song Contest entrant, is "overwhelmed by different emotions” as she attempts to put a brave face on being one of the most controversial contestants in the singing competition’s history.

Talking over Zoom ahead of the semi-finals that will take place on Thursday, Golan, who has a large security detail in tow, isn’t even allowed to disclose whether she is speaking from her hotel room in Malmo, Sweden, such are the security considerations.

Despite being told by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency not to leave her hotel room, on Sunday night Golan, 20, made a surprise appearance to join Malmo’s small Jewish community to mark Yom HaShoah, while her fellow contestants attended Eurovision’s opening gala dinner.

“It was the most important thing for me to be there and it is something that I will never forget,” says Golan, who led the community in singing “Hatikvah”.

“I think it was understandable that I needed to be there. It was important to show what our nation has been through. I wanted to light a candle for our all our beautiful lives, all the lives we have lost. It was a sad day,” the singer says.

She is tight-lipped about how onerous the controversy surrounding her performance has been, from the death threats to which she has been subjected to calls for contestants and viewers to boycott Eurovision this year over Israel’s inclusion. Instead, she says with a showbusiness grin: “I’ve been getting to see Malmo here and there. We have a great security team that has been taking care of me and the entire delegation. I am so happy to be here, it is a crazy honour, especially to show my voice, and Malmo has been treating me well.”

She adds: “I’ve enjoyed performing on stage, I’ve had two rehearsals so far, and I am looking forward to seeing the audience and feeling their energy.” Her first live performance will be at the semi-finals; while entrants from the five biggest financial backers of Eurovision, including the UK, automatically qualify for the final, the rest of the cohort must compete in qualifying rounds.
Eurovision Head Discredits Israel-Russia Comparisons While Commenting on Pressure to Disqualify Jewish State From Contest
Jean Philip de Tender — the deputy director-general of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organized the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest — on Sunday addressed the controversy surrounding Israel’s participation in the international competition.

Appearing on Sky News, he also insisted that “the situation with Russia is different” when asked why Russia and Belarus were not allowed to compete this year in the competition, which will take place from May 7-11 in Malmo, Sweden.

“First of all, we do understand the concerns and deeply held views that many people have around the war in the Middle East, and I think nobody can remain untouched by the profound suffering of everybody involved in that war,” De Tender began saying. “The Eurovision Song Concert is a music event, which is organized and co-produced by 37 public broadcasters, so it’s not a competition between nations or governments.”

For months, anti-Israel activists around the world have tried to pressure the EBU to disqualify or disinvite the Jewish state from the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest because of its ongoing war against Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip — a conflict triggered by Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel and massacre of civilians on Oct. 7. Participating artists have faced pressure to pull out of the Eurovision event as a way to boycott Israel’s involvement, and Israel’s representative in the contest, Eden Golan, has reportedly received death threats. Israel also increased the threat level for traveling to Malmo in response to threats of potential terrorist attacks that could target Israelis visiting the city for the Eurovision.

De Tender told Sky News that when the governing bodies of the EBU, which is a member-led organization, reviewed Israel’s involvement in this year’s Eurovision, they concluded that the Israeli public broadcaster Kan had “met all of the obligations” listed in the competition’s rules that would allow them to take part in the Eurovision. The circumstances were different regarding’s Russia’s involvement in the Eurovision competition, De Tender added.

“With Russia there was a broad consensus within the membership of the EBU that they could not participate,” he said. In addition, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and amid the ongoing war between the two countries, the three Russian members of the EBU were removed for being in breach of member obligations.

“And that is not the case with Kan,” De Tender explained. He said Eurovision steers clear of politics and that if the EBU would exclude Kan because of something outside of competition rules “that would have been a political decision.”
Eden Golan Exclusive Interview - Israel's representative to the 2024 Eurovision song contest

The unapologetically Zionist vegan chef who refuses to be ‘cancelled’ for supporting Israel
Ben Rebuck lost twenty thousand Instagram followers in the fortnight after October 7 and last month thousands more dropped off when he was “outed” as a Zionist. But the Jewish chef behind Ben’s Vegan Kitchen is not worried – his following has more than doubled since the war started.

With over 400,000 Instagram followers and 2.5 million TikTok likes, Rebuck has been cooking up culinary content for the last seven years to a growing global community. With his gold Chai necklace visible in most of his videos, the 32-year-old father-of-one from Radlett says, “Everything I do is Jewish, it’s who I am and it’s what I stand for.”

Antisemitic comments started coming when the food influencer addressed the terror attack on his channel in the days after October 7. More recently, Pesach recipes and a sketch with comedian Zach Margolin have caused a storm, with some anti-Israel vegans harassing him with hundreds of hateful comments.

On the day the video collaboration with Margolin – who alone has 4.2 million TikTok likes – was released, Rebuck lost 1500 followers and another 1000 a day later.

Soon after, an Instagram channel called “Vegans 4 collective liberation” posted a four-page rant “outing” Rebuck as Zionist; a torrent of antisemitism followed. The influencer started appealing to Instagram to step in and act against Jew hate, explaining “The channel was posting 'exposés’ but all they were doing was saying that some people were Jewish.” When the chef’s fans came to his defence, their supportive comments were deleted by the anti-Israel account. Eventually, Instagram took the post down, but the Rebuck says the social media company took too long to act.
New Documentary Traces Auschwitz Commandant’s Son as He Reckons With His Father’s Past
A trailer debuted on Monday for a new documentary about the son of the commandant of Auschwitz coming to terms with his father’s notorious legacy and his own childhood growing up next door to the Nazi death camp in Poland.

The Commandant’s Shadow follows 87-year-old Hans Jürgen Höss, whose late father, Rudolf Höss, was the camp commandant of Auschwitz during World War II and helped oversee the murder of over 1 million Jews during the Holocaust. Höss’s family life inspired the recent Academy Award-winning film The Zone of Interest, but while that film fictionalized the family’s story, The Commandant’s Shadow details the lives of the real people who lived on site at Höss’s death camp.

Hans Jurgen Höss says in the film that he had a “really lovely and idyllic childhood” growing up next door to the Auschwitz concentration camp, while Jews suffered in the extermination camp nearby. The film also introduces viewers to Jewish Auschwitz survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and the historic moment, eight decades after the Holocaust, when she meets the son of the Auschwitz commandant face-to-face. The film additionally features original excerpts of Rudolf Höss’s autobiography, which was written not long before his execution.

The elder Höss was captured by the British after World War II, testified in the Nuremberg Trials, and sentenced to death. He was ordered to write his autobiography in the weeks between his trial and his execution, which took place in Auschwitz. He was hanged in 1947 in the courtyard next to the former gas chambers.

Filmmaker Daniela Völker spent four years writing, producing, and directing The Commandant’s Shadow, which she started developing during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.

The Commandant’s Shadow will be released in theaters across the US on May 29, with an encore presentation the following day, as part of a partnership between Fathom Events and Warner Bros. Pictures. Screenings will be available in more than 500 theaters. Tickets are on sale online from Fathom Events and participating theater box offices.

“This documentary is an incredible look at the reality of Auschwitz through the eyes of those who experienced it in very different ways,” said Ray Nutt, CEO of Fathom Events. “We are very pleased to again partner with Warner Bros. to bring this very important film to the big screen.”






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

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