Wednesday, June 05, 2024

06/05 Links Pt2: Can Contemporary International Law Cope with Today's Terror?; Nothing Is Ever the Palestinians' Fault; Columbia’s Separate-But-Equal Doctrine

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Can Contemporary International Law Cope with Today's Terror?
The war between Israel, Hamas, and other terror organizations has heightened the awareness of the question of whether today's international law is capable of addressing armed conflict between a state and terror organizations. How is a sovereign state, obligated by the conventional rules of international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict, expected to engage in asymmetrical war with terror organizations that distinctly, and by definition, do not consider themselves bound by such rules?

The international community lacks practical and legal means, as well as the basic desire and capability, of obliging such terror groups to abide by the rules. It is questionable whether the law of armed conflict as it exists today is capable of providing legal as well as operative answers to the practical issues arising out of today's struggle against terror.

In light of the biased and partisan reaction of the international community and its automatic accusations against Israel of committing war crimes and even genocide, it is high time that responsible states come to terms with the fact that modern-day terror undermines and abuses accepted humanitarian norms and standards. This must be dealt with both militarily and legally.
Seth Mandel: How the Anti-Israel Propaganda Ecosystem Works
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these NGOs are extremely powerful, because their perceived authority magnifies their voices above those who may know much more about the issues but who don’t have the megaphone or the credibility lent to the European-funded activist groups masquerading as “humanitarians.” Throughout the current war, polls of American public opinion have never demonstrated that the progressive pro-Hamas rump on college campuses or among city protest groups should be catered to. In Israel vs Hamas, Americans don’t hesitate to side with Israel. Even the “ceasefire at any cost” crowd is smaller than it looks and sounds. A Marist poll last week put their share of the public at 25 percent. Yet they have nudged President Biden’s policies in their direction.

How? The protests on college campuses showed not just the organizing power of the left but the role of the media in amplifying their grievances and whitewashing their violence and lawbreaking. And it works in the other direction too: In many cases the media plays a key role in feeding the wildfire of misinformation that fuels the protests before turning around and reporting on them.

UN groups have been uncritically parroting the obviously inaccurate Hamas-produced death tolls. So have the media. In explaining why the Washington Post trusts Hamas propaganda enough to report it as fact, the paper quoted Omar Shakir in Hamas’s defense. Shakir is the Israel/Palestine director of Human Rights Watch and someone who was expelled from Israel over his support for BDS-affiliated groups that seek Israel’s destruction. In other words, if you switched the staffing of the Hamas Health Ministry and Human Rights Watch, the output of both organizations would likely be unchanged.

Employees of the UN’s Palestinian agency, UNRWA, have been credibly accused of taking and holding one or more hostages during the current conflict and of participating in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA was caught sharing space and resources with Hamas commanders, and its schools have reliably been found to host Hamas weapons and tunnel entrances. Yet high-level officials and directors at UNRWA, this clear adjunct of Hamas, go on to leadership positions at the International Committee of the Red Cross (and vice versa). Despite the Red Cross’s clear pro-Hamas orientation during this conflict, journalists quote it as if it speaks in the voice of God.

All of which, as we have seen, feeds the hysteria of the crowds organized by Palestinian groups. That hysteria, in turn, is reported on by the same journalists who’d whipped those protesters into a lather by using Omar Shakir or a Red Cross official on loan from a Hamas-linked UN agency.

In 2013, Karim Khan explained clearly how all of this creates a weighted narrative that influences supposedly objective processes. Now, a decade later, Khan is using that same system to his benefit just so he can nail the Israelis with bogus smears. Those charges will then get reported ad nauseum in the press, and the cycle continues from there.

Though he didn’t intend it at the time, Khan was shining a light on the entire squalid ecosystem of institutional corruption, unethical journalism, and incestuous melding of propaganda outfits that are often funded by governments that then justify their policies toward Israel by citing that very propaganda. If you can’t beat ’em, Khan decided, might as well join ’em.

What’s everyone else’s excuse?
Biden’s mixed messaging on Israel confuses friends and foes alike
On Tuesday morning, Time magazine published the full transcript of its recent Oval Office interview with President Joe Biden, conducted a week prior. One line quickly went viral among Middle East experts: When asked whether Biden believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the country’s war with Hamas to further his own political survival, Biden said the answer might be yes. “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” the president responded.

Hours later, Biden appeared to reverse himself on that sentiment. A reporter shouted a question at Biden as he left an event: Is Netanyahu “playing politics” with the war? “I don’t think so. He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has,” Biden said.

That Biden’s public reversal took place in a single day made the incident especially notable, even for an 81-year-old gaffe-prone president known for speaking off-the-cuff (much to the chagrin of his staffers). But it was not the first time onlookers were confused by his comments on the Middle East.

The White House’s pattern of contradicting itself over Israel’s war against Hamas has become a regular occurrence since October. Interpreting what the administration’s precise policy is at any given moment can take Talmudic levels of parsing, and clarifying whether Biden’s often-vague language reflects a change in message, or is simply a function of misspeaking, is a frequent challenge for journalists.

Stakeholders and experts describe a White House approach rooted in a desire to appease divergent and at times conflicting constituencies, stemming from difficult political realities at home and a fear that the bloody conflict in Gaza will still be raging as Election Day approaches. But trying to make everyone happy is often a self-defeating strategy in Washington, especially on one of the most divisive issues in politics.

“There’s a big danger that the Biden team faces in trying to be everything to everyone and all people at once, that you may end up risking being nothing meaningful,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

Biden has tried to chart a course that maintains U.S. support for Israel, leaning on his longtime self-identification as a Zionist, while also criticizing Israel for not doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza. The farthest he has gone was a threat last month to withhold some U.S.-made offensive weapons depending on Israel’s actions in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Yet his frequent criticism of Israel’s military tactics does not go far enough to appease left-wing Democrats unhappy with Biden’s overall support for Israel; meanwhile, his outreach to the anti-Israel segment of the party irritates Jewish voters and pro-Israel moderates. And Biden’s frequent admonitions of Israel risk hampering the country’s war effort, in the view of many of its supporters. (A National Security Council spokesperson declined to comment.)

Biden’s occasionally harsh rhetoric toward Israel amid the mounting death toll in Gaza is “an indication of real anger and frustration, without actually being willing to confront or be identified fully, to make real what [he] feels, so you get a policy that is conflicted,” said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department employee and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I think the reason they’re conflicted is because he’s got these constituencies that he certainly isn’t going to satisfy. He can try to manage them.”

Behind closed doors, the messaging differs depending on whom the White House is addressing — and who is delivering the message. Biden’s closest advisers on the Middle East are National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; Sullivan’s deputy, Jon Finer; and Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Each of them takes a slightly different approach to the unfolding conflict.


Alan M. Dershowitz: Israel Is Helping Palestinians More Than Those Who Condemn Israel
Consider the fact that no Arab or Muslim nation has been willing to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Perhaps these nations recall that anyone who has tried to help the Palestinians has lived to regret it.

Perhaps Ireland, Norway and Spain might extend invitations to the Palestinians to become residents there?

On April 13, more than 1,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Hamburg, Germany and demanded that the country become a Caliphate, with Shariah law.

The only reason that Ireland, Norway and Spain can safely recognize a Palestinian state is that they do not have to live with the consequences.

Many [Arab and Muslim states]... might feel obligated officially to support the Palestinians and a "two-state solution," but behind closed doors will admit that a Palestinian state is the last thing they want....

The truth is that few outside of Israel really care about the plight of the Palestinian people. The demonstrations on college campuses which purport to be "pro-Palestine" are far more about condemning Israel than about helping the Palestinians.

Those who claim to support the Palestinians... ought to be urging Arab and Muslim nations to help the Palestinians in material ways. These would include....

Until that is done, all the Palestinian people will get are hollow demonstrations on university campuses, empty recognitions from anti-Israel governments, irrelevant United Nations resolutions and bigoted demonization of Israel. None of this helps the Palestinian people. It only encourages more hatred, more terrorism and more war.
Nothing Is Ever the Palestinians' Fault
The Palestinian cause has one defining feature: the refusal of its champions to accept any responsibility for the situation they've made for themselves. In the pro-Palestinian narrative, things simply happen to the Palestinian people, entirely caused by outside forces. Everyone else, but particularly Israel and the Jewish people writ large, is to blame for the woes of the Palestinian people. In reality, however, the self-abnegation of their agency is a tactic meant to camouflage consistently poor choices and overwhelming hatred of Jews.

In their telling, the disaster of 1948, which they call the "nakba," simply befell the Palestinian people. Yet in the historical record, it is clear that these events were driven primarily by the Palestinian Arabs themselves. The UN Partition Plan, which would have created a Jewish state alongside an Arab one in British Mandatory Palestine, was accepted by the Jewish population. The Palestinian Arabs, however, refused the partition and launched a war of extermination against the nascent State of Israel.

The Palestinian people, en masse, have embraced a near-religious devotion to the idea that they will be able to recapture the prewar status quo from before 1948, returning to their homes and undoing the State of Israel. Today, the refugee camps are not tent cities but large-scale, concrete apartment blocks that look no different from any other residential neighborhoods of the region. And they're paid for by international relief dollars.

The enormous flow of funds through the UN and its NGO partners enriches the Palestinian leadership, provides jobs for large swaths of Palestinian society, and funds the terrorism meant to destroy Israel. It pays the families of terrorists, provides construction dollars for building tunnel networks, and funds salaries for Hamas cadres. No wonder the refugee issue hasn't been resolved; it's entirely within Palestinian interests to keep the scam going indefinitely.

The failure of Palestinians to achieve statehood is depicted as being stymied by Israel. This flies in the face of reality. Every time statehood has been offered to the Palestinian leadership, it has been rejected. Instead of choosing the arduous task of state-building and governance, Palestinian leadership has chosen terrorism, eliminationism, and statelessness - a choice that has been repeatedly ratified by the people they lead.

Hamas was elected by the people of Gaza precisely because it is a terror organization. It was not expected to govern but to carry out terror attacks against Israel. In this, it seems as though the Palestinians care less about gaining their own state than they do about destroying someone else's.

Sovereignty entails responsibility. Palestinians need to learn that their choices are their own and have consequences that they must live with. Blaming everything on external forces outside of their control has created a version of learned helplessness among the Palestinian population, one that speaks poorly of their ability to run a successful nation-state.
Why a Sovereign Palestine Would Be a Failed State from the Start
Customary international law mandates that a sovereign state must ensure neighboring nations are protected from harms emanating from within its own borders. If a country is unwilling or unable to do so, they will face the consequences, including the use of force.

This legal justification has been interpreted by countries to permit tactical strikes on foreign soil (as was the case in the Obama administration's policy of extensive drone strikes on Pakistani soil), and likely will be used by Israel as the basis for extensive counterterrorism operations throughout the Palestinian territories. This means a nascent Palestinian state would find itself at war with neighboring Israel almost immediately.

Leaving Hamas in power is unacceptable to Israel and the U.S. The alternative of the Palestinian Authority is widely acknowledged as a hotbed of corruption, graft and misrule that is overwhelmingly unpopular among Palestinians. This means that "Palestine" is predestined to be a failed state from the start.

If the 142 countries that have formally recognized "Palestine" are truly interested in helping Palestinians, a more useful and meaningful approach would be to press for sustainable development and responsible governance.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: We Have Been Subverted
The second force is the radical Islamists, who are riding the coattails of the communists to power. A good example is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many tentacles. Of these tentacles, some are openly religious, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Students Association, each with chapters in nearly every American university. Other organizations don a secular mask, like the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine. These groups have become increasingly confident over the past months. Anti-Israel Muslim candidates recently won elected seats in countries like England, where imams talk openly about reestablishing the caliphate in Europe.

The third force is the Chinese Communist Party. The most obvious avenues through which the CCP has spread subversion in America is through its numerous Confucius Institutes. These organizations have been vehicles for Chinese espionage within major American academic institutions. Then there is TikTok, an addictive social media app controlled by the CCP, which presents Chinese children wholesome, educational content while wreaking havoc on American kids—polarizing them and feeding them anti-American propaganda.

I believe Vladimir Putin is currently waging his own subversion campaign by supporting and advancing the three other forces. That is why I do not place him in one particular category.

What unites these enemies? On the surface, they have little in common. We all know what happens to “Queers for Palestine” in the Palestinian territories. Or Muslims in China. We all know what CCP mandarins think of Black Lives Matter activists. Or rather, what they would think, if they deigned to do so.

But they have wisely chosen the same common enemy: the West.

I am not saying that Bezmenov’s formulation explains all that we are seeing. It clearly does not address all the West’s problems. But once I immersed myself in his formulation, many of the topsy-turvy developments in our institutions fell into place.

The widespread acquisition of useless, aggressively ideological degrees in gender and race, or the claims of the possibility of an unlimited number of genders, or the total racialization and “decolonization” of our political discourse, or the demands to defund the police, the toppling of statues, the defacing of art, the “spontaneous” protests to dismantle our structures, and much else, I now understand as acts of subversion rather than mere expressions of discontent or youthful energy run amok.

It’s important to note that not all activism is subversive. My life would not be possible without the righteous activism of those who fought for women’s rights and civil rights. So how to tell the good activism from the bad?

I regret to tell you that there is no easy way. One thing to pay attention to is your gut. Another is your mind: be discerning and skeptical of people recruiting you to their cause. Does their cause ask toleration of you or require compelled speech? Are you being recruited to fight for a cause you know nothing about? Is that cause maximalist and uncompromising; does it glorify violence?
A Dangerous Moment, with Douglas Murray | Uncommon Knowledge
Author and columnist Douglas Murray has spent much of the past few years reporting from battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza. His reporting on the harrowing conditions in those wartorn locations make his journalism a must-read. In this wide-ranging conversation, Murray describes what he has witnessed, why the West must ensure victories in both wars, and his reaction to the campus protests across the United States, as well as his views on the upcoming British election


What Ails The West | Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Courage We Need To Save Liberty
Bernard Henri Levy, or BHL, is a French philosopher, journalist, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He’s a leading member of the Nouveaux Philosophes movement, but not up in an ivory tower, traveling to warzones to bear witness and write history. His latest book, Solitude of Israel, is set for release in English later this year, reflecting on thoughts that have troubled him since October 7.

When Hamas shocked the world with the October 7 Massacre, Israel felt embraced as never before. World leaders flew in to bear witness and express solidarity. Parliament buildings lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag. Israelis thought - that’s it, this time the world gets it and will back us as we fight for humanity against Hamas, as we fight to bring the hostages home. That optimism has given way to a sense of betrayal. The knowledge that the world wants to end this war with Hamas on its feet - and undermining Israel’s leverage to get the hostages back. SOLITUDE is Israel’s condition, but must it be its fate?


The Saad Truth
Gad Saad has been on sabbatical from his job as a marketing professor at Concordia University since January 1.

Thank goodness for that.

Students at the Montreal-based school, which has been colloquially referred to as “Gaza University” for the past 20 years, only ramped up their anti-Israel, antisemitic rhetoric following Oct. 7. After Jewish students set up a table on campus to commemorate the kidnapped hostages, people accosted them, threw water bottles, attempted to rip down their posters and yelled, “Go back to Poland!”

This past March, the group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights Concordia protested bringing IDF reservists to the school, posting on their social media, “Zionist soldiers will not be welcomed on our campus.”

A class-action lawsuit against the university and its student union accuses both of cultivating a safe space for antisemitism at Concordia since Oct. 7.

This is the same university where a riot broke out in 2002, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak. Several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters blocked people from going to the speech and attacked a Holocaust survivor, Thomas Hecht, as well as Rabbi Howard Joseph and his wife, Norma, a professor at the school.

In November 2023, Saad, a Lebanese Jew, wrote an essay for The National Post claiming that Concordia University was unsafe for Jews. “Over the past few years, I have had Jewish students privately advise me that they have felt unsafe to advertise their Jewish identity whilst on campus,” he wrote. “It is difficult to feel safe when one hears deeply antisemitic cries such as the ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’ chanted by a large gathering of overzealous individuals who greatly outnumber Jewish students and faculty members.”

Saad, who is also an author (“The Parasitic Mind,” “The Saad Truth About Happiness”), has mostly been away from campus due to his sabbatical; when he is on campus, he is escorted by a security detail.

“It’s a very hostile environment,” Saad told The Journal. “It doesn’t mean every student is a rabid activist, but there is certainly a demographic reality at my university that doesn’t make it hospitable to folks like me.”

Saad is used to being a target; he’s been dealing with it his entire life. Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, he was surrounded by antisemitism growing up. In 1970, when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser died, 5-year-old Saad saw a group of protestors walking by his home, shouting, “Death to Jews!” And later, when a teacher asked students what they wanted to be when they got older, one stood up and yelled, “a Jew killer!” The class exploded in applause.

When Saad and his family finally escaped Lebanon, his mother pulled out a Jewish necklace for him as soon as the pilot announced they cleared Lebanese air space. She told him he could wear the necklace from that day forward; he didn’t have to worry about concealing his Jewish identity anymore.
Seth Mandel: Writers Against Books
Howard Jacobson does not share Rooney’s enthusiasm to serve as Hamas culture minister. “The idea that anybody can come along and say ‘you can’t read this and you can’t read that’… is a desecration,” Jacobson said. “It’s a desecration of books, it’s a desecration of the idea of literature.”

Baillie Gifford objects that while the company does allow clients to invest in Amazon and Nvidia (oh the horror), “practically every consumer in the developed world is using the services of these companies.”

And therein lies the point. Sally Rooney and Zadie Smith aren’t going to pull their books from Amazon. That would be crazy! I suppose, though, that they can sell more books if they punish others for working with Amazon. Plus, there will always be a place for Sally Rooney in the literary world if she and other already-successful writers can pull up the ladder behind them and make it much harder for the literary scene to flourish. But that kind of self-interest isn’t really the point here. The self-interest at play is the one where writers are afraid of losing their existing careers because of the proliferating “anti-Zionist” blacklists surfacing throughout the arts and entertainment worlds.

Jacobson, meanwhile, wasn’t the only one bothered by the anti-Zionism book burners. “It’s authoritarian,” said novelist Joan Smith.

That’s the same word used by PEN America board member George Packer after an anti-Israel boycott forced the cancellation of the free-speech-promoting literary group’s World Voices festival. “We like to think of writers as courageous individuals who believe in free expression without fetters,” Packer wrote in May. “In practice, they turn out to be no more able to resist the authoritarian spirit than most other people—maybe less. In the Soviet Union, many writers denounced their imprisoned friends without being told to. Here, they check their social-media traffic first.”

Packer also makes a related point about why these boycotts/cancellations are more damaging than they might appear to the untrained eye: “It isn’t a pretty sight when writers bully other writers into shutting down a celebration of world literature—especially when big names with the most expansive free-speech rights in the world take away a platform from lesser-known writers hoping to reach an audience outside their own repressive countries.”

Yet another story last week suggests the social pressure campaigns are starting to mutate into out-and-out ethnic exclusion demands, a remarkably bigoted escalation and one that seeks to enshrine anti-Semitism in the industry’s standards and practices.

Vancouver-based artist Miriam Libicki is a widely celebrated graphic novelist whose works include But I Live, a collection of nonfiction graphic novels about child survivors of the Holocaust. Libicki also has Israeli citizenship and has served in the IDF, and for that she has been “permanently banned” from the Vancouver Comics Arts Festival. After this year’s event, according to the Canadian Jewish News, attendees approached the organizers with their objection to the fact that Libicki was permitted to attend at all.

One flier posted by protesters asked “Where is the safety plan and warning for people stepping foot into the festival?” The festival apologized for allowing an Israeli in the building and groveled that it “fundamentally falls in absolute disregard to all of our exhibiting artists, attendees and staff, especially those who are directly affected by the ongoing genocide in Palestine and Indigenous community members alike. Upon examining these concerns and conducts, this exhibitor will not be permitted to return to the festival.”

This is extraordinary. Describing a ban on Israelis this way (and, yes, it is a ban on Israelis, since the country has universal service requirements) is not only discriminatory but it is also pure incitement. There’s no telling where this will go once these progressive institutions have decided that the presence of an Israeli-American is a threat to everyone’s safety. The authoritarian winds sweeping through the West are going to put liberal democracy on its back while its cultural celebrities cheer.
Melanie Phillips: My Journey Away From The Racist Anti-Israel Left | The Quad
The Quad interviews the columnist and author Melanie Phillips about how she moved away from the left one she realized the racist undertones and double standard by which Israel was judged. She dissects the left's philosophy, how the West is falling prey to Islamic extremism and how Israel will ultimately prevail.




Anti-Israel activists bring lots of noise but little substance to state Democratic conventions
As Democrats brace for a messy convention in Chicago in August, with the party bitterly divided over the war in Gaza, state-level party activists are starting to meet for their quadrennial conventions, offering an early look at the tension points Democrats will face later this summer.

Amid the bureaucratic business of electing party delegates and approving changes to party rules, the Democrats gathering in places such as Duluth, Minn.; Bangor, Maine; and Jamestown, N.C., are also being asked to weigh in on hefty questions related to the war in Gaza. So far, anti-Israel activists have generated a lot of noise but very little substance when it comes to having an impact on official party positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

People entering the Duluth Convention Center in Minnesota to attend the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor party convention last weekend had to walk past hundreds of anti-Israel protesters waving Palestinian flags and holding signs accusing President Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), whom the party endorsed for reelection, of supporting “genocide” in Gaza. Not all the attendees in the room were die-hard Biden supporters; 18% of Minnesota Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the state’s March primary in protest of Biden’s support for Israel, meaning that faction will now send delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Once inside, attendees heard speeches from top state activists who issued a plea for unity in a pivotal election year.

“We’re a big tent, y’all, and it can get real messy in here,” Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a member of the DFL party, said in a speech. “Some of you voted uncommitted in the primary, and that’s OK because we believe in democracy here. We can be ourselves and express our concerns and come together in a good way and move forward.”

The party’s official platform takes an old-school Democratic approach to the Middle East, supporting “Israel’s right to exist within secure borders, Palestinian rights to self-determination, and continued peace efforts in the Middle East.” Several resolutions that came to the floor attempted to push the party left on the issue but did not pass, although they garnered significant support.

Party activists voted down a resolution calling for Israel to release “unjustly held political prisoners” and another calling for the resumption of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. organization that supports the Palestinians, which the U.S. halted due to its ties to Hamas and employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Another resolution that called for the recognition of a Palestinian state earned 50% of the vote, but it still failed, since measures require 60% of the vote to pass.

Meanwhile, party activists agreed on a resolution that supports the “immediate release of hostages, and prisoners held without trial, immediate humanitarian aid, and an immediate cease-fire through continued peace efforts in Gaza.” The original version of that resolution also included a line expressing support for “a two-state solution that affirms the rights of both the Israeli and Palestinian people each to have their own states within safe and secure borders,” but that was cut out of the final version.

A spokesperson for the party told Jewish Insider that the DFL’s support for Israel remains unchanged. “Israel’s right to exist is still in the DFL’s party platform, and nothing about this weekend’s convention changed that. Our party and its leadership support a two-state solution and unequivocally condemn antisemitism,” said Darwin Forsyth, DFL’s communications director.


Who Is Funding the Pro-Hamas Protests; Are They Aiming to Take Down America?
Rather more jarring is that the Biden administration, and therefore taxpayer money, is also funding the protests, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee... discussed oversight findings from the EPW Committee that revealed a $50 million grant was awarded from the EPA through the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to 'Climate Justice Alliance,' a group that engages in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activities." — US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, May 21, 2024.

"[We] went to the website of Climate Justice Alliance. This is what we found on the website that our taxpayer dollars are going to organizations such as this. This, at the bottom, is a picture of the bulldozer that went through the fence when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7." — Senator Shelley Moore Capito, May 21, 2024.

The People's Forum's executive director Manolo De Los Santos called for the complete destruction of the United States at the conference to great applause: "We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room."

Terrorists and their billionaire, as well as less-affluent supporters, are actively conspiring to destroy the US with the backing of foreign powers -- and very little, if anything, is being done to stop it.
MEMRI: At Detroit 'People's Conference For Palestine' Moustafa Barghouti, Secretary General Of Palestinian National Initiative And Member Of PLO Central Council Praises October 7 Attacks, Adds: Resistance In All Its Forms Is Our Right, Our Way; Taher Herzallah Of American Muslims For Palestine (AMP): Some People Here Today Will Not Be Here Next Year, Because Liberation Struggle Requires Sacrifices; Other Speaker Quotes Poem Honoring Slain PFLP Spokesman
At the People's Conference for Palestine held on May 26, 2024 in Detroit, Taher Herzallah, the associate director for outreach and grassroots organizing for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) said: "The gloves are off." He explained that some people in the room will not be at the conference the following year, because the liberation struggle requires sacrifices. Herzallah also said that the long tentacles of Zionism have reached deep into the American heartland. AMP is currently under investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability for its ties to Hamas via its financial sponsor, Americans for Justice in Palestine and links to the Holy Land Foundation.

Yara Shoufani of the Palestinian Youth Movement and a PhD student at York University, quoted from a poem written in honor of Ghassan Kanafani, spokesman of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who was killed in 1972: "You were the homeland, you were the revolution, you were the pen and the gun." She added: "Welcome to the struggle, we fight until victory."

Moustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative and a member of the PLO Central Council said, that in all its forms, resistance is the right, the way, and the guarantee to succeed in the future of the Palestinians. He added that regardless of the sacrifices, what we have seen since October 7 is a return to the root of the Palestinian problem.

The conference was streamed live on BreakThrough News on YouTube. It is worth noting that the keynote speaker at the conference was Sana' Daqqa, widow of terrorist Walid Daqqa, who died from terminal illness while serving out a life sentence in an Israeli jail. Daqqa was part of a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) comprised of Arab Israelis who kidnapped IDF soldier Moshe Tamam and murdered him. Other speakers at the conference were U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib, mayor of Dearborn Abdullah Hamoud, and PFLP member Wisam Rafidee.

Yara Shoufani: "Our struggle is a long struggle, and one that stands on the shoulders of thousands of martyrs and thousands of fighters who have committed and who are committing their lives to lay the ground for the revolution we see ahead of us today. It is in this tradition that we convene here and commit ourselves to the road ahead.

"After the martyrdom of Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani, a poem written in his honor notes: 'And the homeland, which you were far from, you were the closest of people to it. The homeland in which you should have been living, was living in you. You were the homeland. You were the revolution. You were the pen and the gun.

"Welcome to the conference and welcome to the struggle. We fight until victory!"

Moustafa Barghouti, Secretary General Of Palestinian National Initiative And Member Of PLO Central Council: Al-Aqsa Flood Represented A Continuation Of A True, New Kind Of Uprising; Resistance In All Its Forms Is Our Right, Our Way

Moustafa Barghouti: "Al Aqsa... Al Aqsa Flood, which came on the seventh of October, actually represented a continuation of true, new kind of uprising that started in 2015 in the occupied territories.

"Regardless of how much sacrifices we have to make, in reality, what we have seen since the seventh of October is a return to the roots of the issue. To the roots of the problem. To the roots of why we are suffering as Palestinians.

"In all its forms, resistance is our right. Resistance is our way. Resistance is our guarantee to succeed in our future."
MEMRI: Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network Affiliated With U.S.-Designated Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine (PFLP) Funnels Donations Through Non-Profit Organization Based In Tucson, Arizona
Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidary network which is affiliated with the U.S-designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), is circumventing obstacles to its financial services by funneling donations through a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Tucson, Arizona.

The Samidoun Network: A Brief Background
Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is a self-described "international network of organizers and activists," which seeks to "build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners" by organizing events, activities, and campaigns designed to "make political change and advocate" on their behalf.[1] According to its website, the organization, which was founded in 2012, maintains at least 20 chapters across 12 countries, including the United States, Canada, and France, among others. In the U.S., the organization has chapters in New York/New Jersey and Portland, Oregon.

Samidoun is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. Its international coordinator, Charlotte Kates, is the wife of Khaled Barakat, a former PFLP official and a fellow activist. In 2020, Germany banned Barakat from entering the country for four years, deeming him to be a "security risk" because "his beliefs and continuous talking about liberating Palestine from the river to the sea... working on a strategy to liberate Palestine" and "insisting that Israel has no right to exist" is antisemitic.[2]

In May 2024, Kates was arrested by Canadian police after she delivered a speech at a rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, during which she expressed support for Hamas, the PFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Lebanese Hizbullah, and demanded that they be removed from Canada's terror list.[3]

In a statement, Germany's Federal Minister of the Interior, Nacy Faeser, described the organization as "disseminating anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda while claiming to promote solidarity with prisoners in different countries." She noted: "Samidoun also supported and glorified various foreign terrorist organizations, including Hamas". The Samidoun network itself has been subject to international sanctions. In November 2023, Germany also banned the organization and its local affiliate, Samidoun Deutschland.[4]

Samidoun has an active presence on social media, where it disseminates content glorifying U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. For example, on May 5, 2024, the organization interviewed Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official and U.S.-Specially Designated Global Terrorist. It advertised the interview in a post on its X account.[5]

Samidoun Shares Statement By Palestinian Student Movement In Gaza Calling For 'Comprehensive Escalation' Of 'Global Intifada' And Besieging The White House

On May 29, 2024, Samidoun published on its website, and posted on X[6], a statement issued by the Secretariat of Palestinian Student Frameworks titled, "It Is Time for Revolutionary Escalation of the Global Student Intifada for Palestine: A Call from the Palestinian Student Movement in the Gaza Strip." The statement expresses support for the campaign of student protests in the U.S. and other countries in support of the Palestinian cause and against Israel, urging them to begin "a new revolutionary phase of comprehensive escalation" by besieging the White House, and surrounding the headquarters of governments and corporations that support Israel. Samidoun frequently shares and posts similar calls for escalation across its platforms.
MEMRI: Saudi Journalist: Behind U.S. Student Protests Stands The Muslim Brotherhood, Which Does Not Have The Palestinians' Interests At Heart
Writing in his column in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, journalist Abdallah bin Bjad Al-Otaibi states that behind the pro-Palestinian student protests taking place in campuses across the U.S. stands a years-long alliance between the American liberal left and movements of political Islam, chief of them the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which do not have the Palestinians' interests at heart.

The MB, says Al-Otaibi, has gained a foothold in the U.S. since the mid-20th century with the help of a certain Arab country – hinting at Qatar – that has funded it and helped it gain influence with Congress members and other key figures. This, he argues, shows that "the waving of Hamas and Hizbullah flags at the American student protests is not purely a display of support for the oppressed or of human empathy free of politics." This alliance between political Islam and the liberal left, Al-Otaibi adds, was clearly exposed during the Arab Spring, when then-U.S. president Barack Obama "consciously strove to undermine Arab regimes and deliver them into the hands of the MB and other movements of political Islam." He concludes by saying that, just as the Arab Spring slogans calling for democracy, human rights and free speech turned out to be a false façade for religious dictatorship and terrorist violence, the slogans now chanted in the U.S. in favor of the Palestinian cause and Palestinian rights are a front for the agendas of movements that are not really interested in Palestine's welfare.

The following are translated excerpts from his column:[1]
"It is obvious that the left, with its various orientations, and especially the liberal left, is becoming very widespread in the universities and colleges, just as it dominates the Democratic Party as well as many other fields, such as art and drama, and Hollywood is just one example [of this]. It has far more influence than the new movements such as the Me Too women's movement and Black Lives Matter… Another fact is that the global left is naturally antagonistic, and nobody denies that it has been focusing [its antagonism] on certain regimes for decades. The global left includes the Western left and in particular the American left. Its positions have not drastically changed, although they have developed in secondary directions. [For example,] it has supported the Palestinian cause against Israel for decades; that too is nothing new.

"The peoples of the Arab world must now understand that [support] for the Palestinian cause does not give one license to do as one pleases and does not exonerate every enemy and rival of guilt – otherwise it is possible to justify the acts of murder and occupation committed by the Iranian regime against the Arab peoples as long as they are carried out in the name of the Palestinian cause.

"No reasonable person denies the power of the American left, which years ago took over many circles and many public and private institutions, and today constitutes the strongest current in the Democratic Party. But what is the connection between the Islamists, or the movements of political Islam and their leaders, and the U.S.?... [Even] if they have influence and presence in the West, what is their connection to the liberal left? These are questions that need to be asked, and the answers can lead us to rethink current events and to understand the policy of [former U.S. president] Obama in the region and the policy of [the current U.S. president], Biden, and his administration and of the movements that are behind all of this.
A Slush Fund for Radical Protesters?
The profusion of identical green tents at this spring’s anti-Israel protests struck many as odd. “Why is everybody’s tent the same?,” asked New York mayor Eric Adams. Like others, the mayor suspected “a well-concerted organizing effort” driving the protests. More recent reporting shows a concerted push behind the Gaza protest movement. But it is not as simple as a single organization secretly rallying protesters or buying tents. Instead, the movement’s most determined activists represent a network of loosely linked far-left groups. Some are openly affiliated with well-known progressive nonprofits; others work in the shadows.

The movement also draws on diverse but generous sources of financial backing. Those funding streams may soon be augmented by the federal government. As I chronicled last year in a Manhattan Institute report, “The Big Squeeze: How Biden’s Environmental Justice Agenda Hurts the Economy and the Environment,” the administration’s massive program of environmental justice grants seems designed to prioritize the funding of highly ideological local groups. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarks $3 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” intended for local nonprofits. Today, hundreds of far-left political groups include language about environmental issues and “climate justice” in their mission statements. If just a fraction of planned grants flows to such groups, the effect will be a gusher of new funding for radical causes.

As the Gaza protests spread across U.S. college campuses, many observers noted an eerie uniformity among them. From one campus to the next, protesters operated in disciplined cadres, keeping their faces covered and using identical rote phrases as they refused to talk with reporters. The Atlantic noted the strangeness of seeing elite college students “chanting like automatons.” Students held up keffiyeh scarves or umbrellas to block the view of prying cameras and linked arms to halt the movements of outsiders. At Columbia University and elsewhere, protesters formed “liberated zones,” from which “Zionists” were excluded. Around the edges of the encampments, the more militaristic activists donned helmets and goggles and carried crude weapons, apparently eager to mix it up with police or counter-protesters. We’ve seen these tactics before—notably during the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, when full-time agitators helped ignite riots, set up a police-free (and violence-plagued) zone in Seattle, and laid nightly siege to Portland, Oregon’s federal courthouse.

In a remarkable work of reporting, Park MacDougald recently traced the tangled roots of organizations backing pro-jihad protests, both on and off campuses. These include Antifa and other networks of anonymous anarchists, along with “various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition,” MacDougald writes. Higher up the food chain, we find groups openly supported by America’s growing class of super-rich tech execs or the anti-capitalist heirs of great fortunes. For example, retired tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who is married to Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, funds The People’s Forum, a lavish Manhattan resource center for far-left groups. As the Columbia protests intensified, the center urged members to head uptown to “support our students.” Following the money trail of other protest groups, MacDougald finds connections to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and—surprising no one—the George Soros-backed Tides Foundation.

Of course, the current wave of anti-Israel protests also involves alliances with pro-Hamas organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Last November, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified to the House Ways and Means Committee that SJP and similar groups have deep ties to global terrorist organizations, including Hamas.

For many keffiyeh-wearing protestors, however, a recently professed concern for Palestinians is just the latest in a long list of causes they believe justify taking over streets and college quads. In Unherd, Mary Harrington dubs this medley of political beliefs the “omnicause,” writing that “all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one.” Today’s leftist activists share an interlocking worldview that sees racism, income inequality, trans intolerance, climate change, alleged police violence, and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts all as products of capitalism and “colonialism.” Therefore, the stated rationale for any individual protest is a stand-in for the real battle: attacking Western society and its institutions.
Congress Expands Anti-Semitism Probe Into 10 Colleges and Threatens Billions in Federal Funding
Six congressional oversight committees on Monday initiated a wide-ranging probe into anti-Semitism at 10 top American colleges and are laying the groundwork to potentially cut off billions of dollars in federal funding to these institutions, according to a series of letters obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

"Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis," six Republican committee chairmen wrote in letters addressed to Harvard University, Columbia University, MIT, Barnard, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Rutgers University, and the University of California’s Berkeley and Los Angeles branches.

Each of these schools has been in the national spotlight for their failure to curb mass anti-Israel protests that have endangered Jewish students and drawn accusations that university leaders are unable and unwilling to stem rising anti-Semitism on campus.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has been leading its own investigation into pervasive anti-Semitic harassment on these campuses for several months now, and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability joined the probe in mid-May, when it requested federal authorities turn over internal information on nearly two dozen nonprofit groups that are bankrolling the protests and could be guilty of violating anti-money laundering and terrorism laws. Several of the House’s most powerful committees will now join the investigation to determine if the 10 schools should have their federal funding slashed for violating Jewish students' civil rights.

This includes the Committee on Ways and Means, which has broad jurisdiction over the tax-exempt status provided to these institutions; the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees civil liberties and criminal law enforcement; the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which controls the federal agencies providing lucrative grants to universities; and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which oversees coveted research and development projects conducted at many of the schools.

"The U.S. House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic harassment and intimidation" on campus, the committee leaders wrote in separate letters to each of the 10 universities. "Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities."
Seth Mandel: Columbia’s Separate-But-Equal Doctrine
To put it another way: Columbia cannot or will not pledge to make all open areas of the campus safe for Jewish students. Columbia cannot or will not take measures necessary to ensure that Jewish students will have access to the same educational opportunities that their non-Jewish classmates will have. Columbia cannot or will not even pretend to enforce its own rules evenly.

Look, I don’t blame the student or students who settled. But it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that Columbia has settled a civil-rights lawsuit by declaring its campus separate-but-equal. (And the “equal” part is pretty clearly still up in the air.)

Jewish students are already able to sneak around campus if they so choose. The entire point is that the school should be required to enact (or enforce) policies that make that unnecessary. Plus, students followed and harassed late at night on their way back to their dorms are still able to get into their building. What is a bureaucrat with a key and a beeper going to accomplish here?

Columbia is notorious for its professors—you know, the ones who hold the educational and thus professional fate of the students in their hands—openly targeting Jews. What’s the fix here? Next time Joseph Massad says that the rapes and murders of Oct. 7 were a “major achievement,” a student should just call the safety liaison to escort them from the building?

You begin to see here just how these safety liaisons can quickly become the Jew-baiters’ enforcers. A Columbia professor said Israelis are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus; if a safety liaison shows up to help Israelis use the back door, whose side does it look like he’s on?

Jewish students feel stigmatized, so Columbia has generously agreed to stigmatize them further.
Columbia University Settles Lawsuit With Jewish Student Over Unsafe Environment
Columbia University on Tuesday settled a lawsuit with a Jewish student who said the school had failed to provide a safe environment by turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism on campus.

In late April, the unnamed student said that their education had been disrupted by a hostile environment on campus after anti-Israel protesters set up a "Gaza Solidarity" encampment, disrupting normal campus operations for nearly two weeks. Blatant anti-Semitism and praise for terrorists were recurring features of the encampment. Columbia president Minouche Shafik was ultimately forced to call in law enforcement after student protesters seized a university building.

Under the settlement Columbia agreed to "provide walking escorts across campus, 24 hours per day, and 7 days per week" through at least the end of the year. The Ivy League school will also appoint a "Safe Passage Liaison" to "serve as the designated point of contact for Columbia students with safety concerns as a result of protest activity on campus," and coordinate the response to student requests for escorts.

Meanwhile, students affected by the disruptive campus protests who were unable to complete key assignments or finish their exams will be allowed to seek necessary accommodations.

"This settlement sets the bar for how Columbia must protect its students," the student's attorney Jay Edelson told Reuters. "The next step for the Columbia community is just as important: We're looking toward a return to a real debate on campus."


Avi Yemini SCHOOLS student journalist on Israel
During the recent rally against antisemitism outside the Victorian State Parliament, I was confronted by a man who identified as a student journalist.

The interaction continued to a nearby coffee shop where the student requested an interview, and quickly devolved into a revealing display of his ignorance regarding the Middle East conflict.

Tellingly, his TikTok posts, under the username Joeyrob0 prior to the event had shown him expressing vehemently anti-Israel sentiments, despite his claims of impartiality.

During the conversation, he struggled to articulate basic facts about the conflict. He misinterpreted the chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" as a call for ending persecution and apartheid, rather than understanding its origins in Hamas rhetoric, which calls for the elimination of Israel.

I pointed out that Israeli Arabs enjoy equal rights and that the chant promotes genocide, not freedom.

The discussion further highlighted his misconceptions when he claimed that Palestinians in Israel live under apartheid.


Tensions flare as Portland teachers’ union promotes pro-Palestinian teaching guides
A chorus of Jewish leaders, teachers and parents are expressing outrage with the Portland Public Schools teachers’ union for hosting a pro-Palestinian advocacy meeting last week where organizers encouraged teachers to display Palestinian flags in their classrooms, wear T-shirts emblazoned with a pro-Palestinian message highly offensive to Jewish communities and lead lessons on Gaza that critics say are misleading and antisemitic.

Last month, the union — the Portland Association of Teachers — also posted a guide to its website titled “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools” and linked to dozens of lesson plans and videos that many members of Jewish communities say demonize Jews and supporters of Zionism by focusing on the death, destruction and upheaval experienced by everyday Palestinians without mentioning the genesis of the Israel-Hamas war: Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, killing of civilians and taking of hundreds of hostages.


Class action to hold USYD accountable for antisemitism
A failure to effectively tackle antisemitism on campus in the wake of October 7 has led to the University of Sydney (USYD) staring down the barrel of a potential class action under the Racial Discrimination Act.

Barrister Adam Butt, who successfully spearheaded the recent antisemitic bullying case against Brighton Secondary College in Melbourne, has joined forces with law firm Levitt Robinson in seeking Jewish staff and students at USYD to join the action.

They plan to seek damages for racial vilification, breach of duty of care, breaches of contract between academics and students and Occupational Health and Safety breaches.

The AJN understands a successful action could set a precedent for other universities.

“The sustained and toxic nature of the attacks on Jews at Sydney University have had a grave effect on the psyche of students and academics alike,” Levitt Robinson senior partner Stewart Levitt said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said, “The fact that students and staff feel so let down by their universities that they have to contemplate private legal action brings shame to our higher education sector.”

A USYD spokesperson said the university was aware of the potential action “and will consider our response”.


‘Disgrace’: Sydney University professor branded a ‘crazy apologist' for Hamas
Sky News host Rowan Dean has hit out at Sydney University for letting a professor talk pro-Palestinian “garbage”.

A professor at the University of Sydney claimed the Hamas mass rape was "fake news".

Mr Dean accused the professor of being a “crazy apologist for Hamas”.




TikTok Executives To Speak at Conference Organized by Group That Has Defended Hamas Attack on Israel and Promoted 'Knife Intifada'
TikTok, the Chinese-controlled social media giant, has denied allegations that it enables anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas content on its platform. That claim will be a tough sell given the company's partnership with an anti-Israel "digital rights" group that defends Hamas and has called for "intifada" against Israel.

Three TikTok executives will speak Wednesday at the Palestine Digital Activism Forum, organized by 7amleh, according to an itinerary of the event. The conference theme is artificial intelligence, which 7amleh says has reinforced "occupation and oppression" against Palestinians and perpetuates "racist and dehumanizing narratives" about Muslims.

7amleh, also known as the Arab Center for Social Media Development, has a history of defending terrorist groups and promoting violence against Israelis. In October 2015, it endorsed the "knife intifada," during which Palestinians fatally stabbed dozens of Israelis in lone wolf attacks. 7amleh used the hashtags "#intifada" and "#strike" in the Oct. 11, 2015, post.

After Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, 7amleh board member Niveen Abu Rahmoun, who will take part in the tech conference, praised the "resistance," which she said "shall escalate and shall impose a new reality," according to NGO Monitor. Jalal Abukhater, 7amleh's advocacy director, who will participate in the forum, has said that Zionists are "prone to commit genocidal violence."

The group's leaders have defended terrorists affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. That rhetoric was too much even for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a staunch critic of Israel. The Massachusetts Democrat canceled her planned appearance because of 7amleh officials' defense of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Wrong, New York Times: Israel is No Metaphor for Apartheid
South Africa Apartheid is not a metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For some reason, many attempt to make a despicable conflation between the two, when they could not be more different.

In Lydia Polgreen’s New York Times op-ed “South Africa is not a Metaphor,” she delves into the rise and fall in popularity of the African National Congress (ANC) party among average South Africans since its revolution on apartheid South Africa in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Buried among the personal anecdotes of ex-ANC supporters, are six paragraphs dedicated to arrogantly drawing a false comparison to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and current Israel-Hamas war. In doing so, Polgreen leaves out necessary context.



Polgreen brings in the ICJ’s contentiously misinterpreted January ruling regarding IDF operations in the Gaza Strip, and their “plausibility” of “genocide” on Palestinian civilians.



We have seen this time and time again from different reporters, and the ICJ ruling on the IDF’s operation in Gaza does not cease to be reported by the media in a manner that is not only irresponsible but dangerous. Words create a ripple effect in real world behavior. Journalists are looked to as vehicles to uncovering truth, and are supposed to be, at least, reliable sources of information.

But this op-ed was published long after clarifications were made, including by former ICJ president Joan Donoghue, among others. These corrections and clarifications were blatantly ignored in what appears to be an effort to continue fitting someone’s personal narrative. It’s unfortunate — for Polgreen, the New York Times, and for Jews around the world who inevitably bear the heat of this dangerous reporting.

Polgreen also attempts to mask the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a United States-recognized terror group, as a “left-wing ally,” by explaining its support for the ANC during the fall of apartheid. She then goes on to describe “separation” and “oppression” of Palestinians by Israel, falsely portraying the conflict as a racial one.

However, Israeli military actions are primarily based on security considerations to prevent terrorism, and have no place being compared to racial oppression, segregation or class systems.


At the Guardian, Jerry Seinfeld is the 'wrong' kind of Jew
Mahdawi, who, as we’ve demonstrated, is, even by Guardian standards, an especially dishonest writer/activist, was true to form in her hatchet job, falsely accusing Seinfeld not only of misogyny, but, even more shamefully, of “cheerleading…genocidal violence” and “joking about suffering children in Gaza”.

Here’s the relevant part:
But while Seinfeld has never been a bleeding-heart liberal, it feels like he’s never been quite so vocally anti-progressive as he is now. Ever since 7 October, Seinfeld has advocated loudly for Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians, demonized pro-Palestinian protesters, and joked about suffering children in Gaza. “Save the children of Gaza,” he said in a mocking voice after getting heckled by pro-Palestinian protesters at a show. Along with cheerleading what the United Nations human rights council has described as genocidal violence, he has also apparently decided that a great tactic for publicizing his much-panned movie about Pop-Tarts is by complaining about the left. Let’s unpack this:
First, like most people outside of Mahdawi’s anti-Zionist bubble, Seinfeld’s reaction to the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust was to express support for the Israeli victims and support the war against the genocidal terrorist group responsible for it. The incident involving the ‘pro-Palestinian protesters’ in question involved two Israel haters interrupting a performance of his in Norfolk, Virginia to scream at Seinfeld himself – again, because he supports Israel in their war with Hamas – that he’s a “genocide supporter”, and that everyone in the crowd is a genocide supporter. A second protester interrupted the show, screaming ‘Save the Children of Gaza’. As you can see in the video published at various media outlets, Seinfeld did not “joke about suffering children of Gaza”. He reacted to the interruption by rightly mocking the protester for evidently believing that harassing a Jewish performer in the US is going to help Palestinians.

Next, in the paragraph cited above, Mahdawi falsely claims that the “United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) described” Israel’s war as “genocidal violence”. If you open the link, it clearly shows that it wasn’t the UNHRC itself which charged Israel with genocide. The accusation was made by the widely discredited UN ‘Special Rappatour’ Francesca Albanese – in a report to the UNHRC.
Truth held hostage: Language differences in Wikipedia's 'Israel-Hamas War' page - opinion
While fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing, Wikipedia's open editing model also renders the platform susceptible to manipulation, particularly in controversial topics like the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The "Israel-Hamas War" article on Wikipedia presents a prime example of such linguistic manipulation. The World Jewish Congress (WJC) stated in a March 2024 report that "the state of the articles dealing with the conflict is alarming in its lack of neutrality."

On December 12, 2023, Arabic Wikipedia turned the site black for a day over the Israel-Hamas war, showing solidarity with Palestinians. Its logo remains partially black, wrapped in the Palestinian flag with a provocative banner. This violated neutrality principles, drawing widespread Israeli condemnation. Itzik Edri, Wikimedia Israel Association chairman, expressed dissatisfaction: "This is a sad day... when one of our most important projects was taken hostage by politics. This is not the vision of our movement; this is not what hundreds of thousands of volunteers have worked so hard to build." Despite protests, the Wikimedia Foundation decided not to intervene in the matter.

Wikipedia acknowledges the vast differences between different-language editions of the same subject, stemming from independent editing communities, the availability and use of sources in different languages, cultural and political contexts influencing perspectives, and others. However, in our context, examining these differences reflects contradictory narratives and meanings created by such “versions” of a singular article.

The Arabic version
The Arabic version of the "Israel-Hamas War" article presents a narrative that portrays Hamas's actions as primarily targeting Israeli military sites and settlements while downplaying the Israeli civilian casualties. For instance, it states that “[Hamas] took control of several military sites, particularly in Sderot, reached Ofakim, infiltrated Netivot, and engaged in fierce clashes in these settlements and others, capturing several soldiers and civilians and taking them to Gaza, in addition to seizing a number of Israeli military vehicles.” An Arab reader reading this, seven months after the beginning of the war might think that the attack was chiefly against the Israeli army and “settlements” (a word that is understood in most of the world as villages built in the West Bank). However, Sderot, Ofakim, and Netivot are not army bases, are not part of the West Bank, and the vast majority of the people who were murdered there by terrorists were civilians. This verbal manipulation makes the Arab readers think that the people that were “captured” (not taken hostage!) were chiefly soldiers and not civilians, while this is clearly not the case.

Furthermore, the Arabic version's "Background and Causes" section states (in a passive tense) that "several acts of violence erupted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," suggesting that the violence occurred almost without any initiative by Hamas and as a mere reaction to Israel. It is not described as a sophisticated commando operation involving planning and training in other states like Iran. This distortion is further reinforced by mentioning Palestinian casualties first, followed by Israeli casualties, framing the war as a result of Israeli violence.
The media is working against Israel and at the service of the enemy - opinion
The Al Jazeera network, banned from broadcasting in Israel, is not the only one characterized by hostility to Israel and lies.

The extreme anti-Israel stance of the international media incriminates a number of senior journalists and researchers across world outlets. The media's hostility towards Israel

The BBC is also famous for its hostility to Israel, with interviewers’ questions evidencing their shocking ignorance and disinterest in the truth. The Dutch media network NPO, too, is antipathetic toward the Jewish state.

An Israeli friend whose grandson is studying at a Dutch school told me the following: NPD produces a children’s program called Jeugdjournaal or “Youth News Journal,” theoretically aimed at children aged 9-12 and watched all over the country.

In fact, children as young as six watch the show. As part of the subsidized curriculum, all the schools in the Netherlands screen it regularly, followed by a discussion with the students.

Last week, the child asked his mother: “Mom, have you heard that four leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s chief of staff, are going to jail?” She asked what he meant and he said, “In Jeugdjournaal, we were told that Israel killed many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, so now the prime minister and the chief of staff are going to prison.”

Musawa, the Palestinian Authority (PA) television channel, together with the PA’s antisemitic UNRWA schoolbooks, is responsible for programming Palestinian children to hate Israel and the Jews.
News site editor’s ties to Iran, Russia show misinformation’s complexity
Recently unearthed documents reveal that leaders of an online news site aimed at Americans have received money from both Russian and Iranian government media outlets, showing how widening geopolitical alliances are making it harder to identify and trace foreign influence operations.

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Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to a writer who is now Washington-based editor for Grayzone, whose founder regularly appears on Russian television and once accepted a trip to Moscow for a celebration of Russian state-controlled video network RT that featured Vladimir Putin.

Misinformation experts say the overlap in funding underscores concern that the spread of falsehoods and propaganda online is entering a more complicated stage as the November election draws closer.

“What you are reporting is, I think, the most practical example of that convergence we’ve seen, where you have someone who has deep ties to Iranian state media working for an organization that we also know is a destination for narrative laundering from Russia,” said Emerson Brooking, co-director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab.

The Press TV files, much of them in Persian, were released on Telegram in 2022 by a self-proclaimed hacktivist group called Black Reward, but the files received little attention then. An activist disinformation researcher, Neal Rauhauser, converted them into a searchable format and provided them to The Washington Post.

The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid a Washington-based reporter for occasional contributions to its programming in 2020 and 2021 while he was working as a correspondent for Russia’s Sputnik news outlet.

That reporter, Wyatt Reed, had nine bylines in the online publication Grayzone in 2019 and 2020, followed by a gap of 2½ years. He has had 24 more Grayzone bylines since mid-2023, when he was identified as managing editor.

Grayzone posts content on the web, X and YouTube and has been highly critical of Iran’s regional enemy Israel and its supporters in the United States. Reed did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Grayzone top editor Max Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment.
Eli Lake: Fifty Shades of ‘The Grayzone’
The mystery of The Grayzone, for some, has been whether the outlet is being paid for their PR by the autocrats and terrorists they defend. Over the weekend, The Washington Post published an intriguing piece revealing that one of The Grayzone’s editors, Wyatt Reed, was compensated for his freelance work for Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV while he was also working for the Russian state organ Sputnik.

This has been a pattern for The Grayzone. Another reporter for the website who is featured on its masthead, Anya Parampil, is a former host for RT, the Russian state propaganda outlet banned in Europe and Canada after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, Parampil wrote that she contacted a senior Russian official to help Tucker Carlson score an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin. (Parampil and Blumenthal wed in 2020.)

There is also the fact that The Grayzone’s pieces have been reprinted and cited by authoritarian regimes in their own outlets. A study from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in March 2021 found that between December 2019 and February 2021, English-language state-run Chinese media cited The Grayzone 252 times. That’s not surprising considering that The Grayzone has attacked researchers calling attention to the plight of the Uyghur minority in China.

All of that said, The Washington Post piece does not answer the central mystery of The Grayzone. Hiring staff that received a paycheck from authoritarian propaganda outlets is not the same as taking covert funding from those countries directly. And while Blumenthal has been a frequent guest on both PressTV and RT (he even attended the infamous Moscow RT Gala in 2015 that got retired general Michael Flynn in so much trouble), he has consistently said that his website is funded by its readers.

And for all we know, that is true. Still, if a “news” site keeps explaining away the aggression, atrocities, and oppression of the worst regimes on earth, does it really matter if the regimes themselves are paying for such great press? The sad truth is they probably don’t need to pay, as Blumenthal’s own checkered journalism career shows there are plenty of Americans who are willing to defend the most indefensible tyrants out of only their conviction.


OPEC+ nations extend oil supply cuts
Major oil producing nations over the weekend extended previously announced oil supply cuts through the end of next year.

The group of countries, known as OPEC+, said Sunday it would extend voluntary supply cuts announced in April until the end of 2025. It also extended further cuts, announced in November, through September of this year.

The extended cuts are expected to exert upward pressure on oil prices in the months ahead, though they will not be the only factor that has influence.

Any increases in oil and gasoline prices are expected to hurt President Biden’s campaign, regardless of whether they are tied to his actions.
Adeel Mangi Has Downplayed His Work With This Anti-Semitic Think Tank. Its Director Said He Was Part of its ‘Formidable Braintrust.’
Embattled Biden judicial nominee Adeel Mangi has repeatedly claimed to have had a "limited" role at a think tank known for anti-Semitic rhetoric and affiliation with convicted terrorists. The group's executive director had a different perspective.

Mangi, the nominee for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, has said his advisory board position at the Rutgers University Center for Race, Security, and Rights "was limited to providing advice on academic areas of research, primarily through a meeting held once a year."

But Sahar Aziz, the executive director of the Rutgers Center, called Mangi and other advisory board members part of her "formidable braintrust" in a May 2019 Instagram post. Aziz stood next to Mangi and other members of the advisory board in the photo, first spotted by the watchdog group StopAntisemitism.

It’s not the first evidence that calls into question Mangi’s statements about his work with the Rutgers Center, which has imperiled Mangi’s nomination because of its anti-Israel views. Mangi told senators he left the center’s board in June 2023 over disagreements with its academic output. But emails show Mangi informed Aziz he was leaving the board because he had other time commitments, the Washington Free Beacon reported. In his resignation email, Mangi praised the center’s "excellent work" and pledged his "ongoing financial support."

Mangi began downplaying his role following reports that the center hosted a 9/11 anniversary event with convicted terrorism financier Sami al-Arian in 2021. Republicans have also criticized Aziz over a letter she signed in 2021 which expressed "awe" at the "Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism."

Many of the center’s faculty affiliates have espoused anti-Israel views. Columbia professor Joseph Massad, a faculty affiliate, called Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel "awesome." Hatem Bazian, the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Hamas group, is also a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers center.

Mangi’s nomination hangs by a thread after three Senate Democrats said they would vote against him. But the White House has refused to pull his nomination, accusing Mangi’s critics of "Islamophobia" against the first Muslim nominee for the federal appeals court.

"Adeel Mangi has repeatedly downplayed his connections to the antisemitic Rutgers Center for Race, Security and Rights, but this photo only further refutes his claims," said Liora Rez, the executive director of StopAntisemitism. "The math already demonstrates that Mr. Mangi cannot be confirmed, and this news should only further erode his dwindling support."
Rep. Bill Pascrell, 87, easily fends off NJ primary challenge from far-left, anti-Israel candidate
Longtime Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) defeated an anti-Israel New Jersey mayor in the Garden State’s 9th Congressional District Democratic primary Tuesday, a race that centered on divisions over the Israel-Hamas war.

Pascrell, 87, beat Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah for the Democratic nomination for Congress by a whopping 54-point margin, receiving 77% of the vote with more than three-quarters of ballots in.

The 14-term House member — first elected to Congress in 1996 — has been a staunch supporter of Israel, declaring last December that Israelis “have every right to protect themselves and defend themselves” in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on the Jewish state.

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you for trusting me again, NJ-09,” Pascrell wrote on X after his victory.

“I will never stop fighting for our neighbors. I love New Jersey! American democracy itself is on the ballot this fall,” he said in a separate post.

Pascrell, an Army vet and former mayor of Paterson, was forced to defend his vote to approve $26.4 billion in US military aid to Israel and his insistence that any cease-fire be contingent on “freed hostages” amid a Khairullah campaign focused on opposing Israel’s war against Hamas.

Khairullah’s campaign was buoyed by Prospect Park’s sizable Palestinian American population.

The Syrian native moved to New Jersey in 1980, and aside from his mayorship, he works as an assistant principal at Passaic County Tech-Vocational Schools.
Jamaal Bowman’s Onetime Ally Endorses His Primary Challenger, Citing Horror at Bowman's Israel Views
Former New York Rep. Mondaire Jones (D.) endorsed New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s (D.) pro-Israel primary challenger and expressed his horror at Bowman’s incendiary positions on the Israel-Hamas war.

Jones, who is running for Congress in the neighboring 17th Congressional District, first revealed his endorsement of Westchester County executive George Latimer (D.) in an interview with the New York Times on Monday. Jones held a press conference on Tuesday morning explaining that Bowman had sown "pain and anxiety" among Jewish New Yorkers.

"I want to be clear: I am making this endorsement to stand up for my Jewish constituents because Rep. Bowman and I have very different views on Israel," Jones said Tuesday. "I have been horrified by his recent acceptance of the DSA endorsement, his denial of the sexual assault of Israeli women by Hamas on October 7, and his embrace of Norman Finkelstein, a well-known anti-Semite."

In contrast, Jones added, Latimer is "standing strong with our allies like Israel and safeguarding our democracy."

The endorsement reflects how much the embattled incumbent has fallen out of favor with fellow New York Democrats as the primary race nears its end. In a June 2020 Intercept interview during his first congressional run, Jones encouraged more people "like Mr. Bowman" to run for elected office. Bowman described himself as a "socialist" to the outlet earlier that month.

"And increasingly, I think, laypersons are of the view that we need more people like myself and Mr. Bowman in Congress, and I’m really grateful that average people are not taking their cues from Democratic committee members, but rather from—from the candidates themselves as they evaluate the differences among what’s being offered to them," Jones said.
Birmingham mosque’s new chief cast doubt on Hamas massacre casualty figures
The new imam of a Birmingham mosque implied that 9/11 was a case of a “bully” getting a “bloody nose” and appeared to cast doubt on the idea of hundreds of Israelis being killed on Oct 7.

Abdul Haqq Baker, the chief executive officer of Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre, also compared the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust and suggested that Hamas had treated Israeli hostages well.

Mr Baker is a former chairman of Brixton mosque in London who was last month announced as the head of Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, an organisation which has charitable status.

In a YouTube video recorded in 2021 to mark the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, he recalled that on the day of the attacks he had bumped into a friend who had compared it to a bully getting a bloody nose - a metaphor which he used in a sermon a few days later.

Mr Baker said: “As I came out of the station I saw one of my old school friends. He knew I was Muslim, he wasn’t Muslim. And he looked at me and said ‘how you doing’... I said ‘it’s shocking isn’t it?’ He goes ‘yeah, the bully got a bloody nose’.

“Now that stuck with me so much so that when I gave the khutbah [sermon] on Friday… I mentioned that at the beginning of my khutbah, and I referred to my friend. I said ‘as one of my non-Muslim colleagues said, the bully has got a bloody nose’.”

Mr Baker has also made a number of controversial statements in the wake of the Oct 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent military action in Gaza. ‘Atrocious parallel’

In a video recorded on Oct 28, one day after Israel launched its full-scale invasion of Gaza, he compared the situation in the territory to the Holocaust.

“We know about the atrocious - and I say this word - atrocious Holocaust that took place, World War Two, Nazi Germany,” he said. “We’re witnessing another parallel now in the 21st Century.”

In the video, he also appeared to cast doubt on whether hundreds of Israeli civilians had been killed on Oct 7.


Why Mexico’s center-right Jewish community didn’t vote for its first Jewish president
In the recent elections, Mexicans chose Claudia Sheinbaum as their next president—making her, as news outlets have noted, both the country’s first female head of state and its first Jewish one. Yet Sheinbaum has little connection to the country’s Jewish communities, and prefers to describe herself, when she mentions the subject at all, as having “Jewish origins” (of which she has said she is proud) rather than as being Jewish. Canaan Lidor observes that her detractors are far more eager to bring up the subject:
In an op-ed from December by Francisco Ruiz Quirrín, a columnist for the ultra-conservative weekly Primera Plana, he warned, in connection with a Sheinbaum victory, that “The Jewish community is willing to exert whatever pressure is necessary to influence one of its own over any political commitment.”

Vicente Fox, a former president and Mexican right-wing stalwart, has apologized for posting on [social media] last year that between Sheinbaum and Xóchitl, “the only Mexican is Xóchitl,” referring to Xóchitl Gálvez, Sheinbaum’s main rival in the elections. Fox did this in a repost of a text characterizing Sheinbaum as a “Bulgarian Jew.” Later that same year, he posted “Jewish and also a foreigner” about a picture of Sheinbaum wearing a crucifix pendant.

Nor should anyone think that Sheinbaum has any sympathy for the Jewish state:
In 2009, . . . Sheinbaum condemned Israel’s bombing in Gaza that year: “Nothing justifies the murder [sic] of Palestinian civilians. . . . Nothing can justify the murder of a child,” she wrote in a letter to a local newspaper. But she appears to have remained largely silent on Israel following Hamas’s October 7 slaughter in southern Israel. . . . This has not prevented allegations online that she is a “Zionist,” but it may have not hurt her appeal to voters critical of the Jewish state.


Palestinians climb over border wall into Israel, again
Palestinians were captured on security cameras climbing over the border barrier wall into Southern Israel just a week after another group was seen doing the same further north. The 11 men who reside in the area of the West Bank city of Hebron, and who did not have security clearance to enter the country, have no trouble breaching the barrier while Israel is in war.

They used a ladder to climb on to and off the barrier but were arrested by security forces who had prior intelligence indicating an attempt would be made to enter Israel illegally at that location. The forces also arrested a Bedouin resident of the Negev who was on hand to transport them.

Last Monday, security cameras captured 19 men climbing over the border wall in the center of the country. They too had infiltrated in order to find work after Israel banned the 150,000 West Bank Palestinians who had been working in the country from entering, when the war broke out. Security forces arrested the men who were unarmed

"The pictures speak for themselves," Lachish Regional Council Mayor Boaz Shlomo said. "The entire perception of security has failed when the border is so easily breached. There is no advance warning. Today the men were simply looking for work, tomorrow they could be Hamas terrorists on their way to commit mass murder. I've raised the alarm with the National Security minister," he said.


PMW: Hamas: We killed Zionist soldiers in Gaza; PA: All of Gaza is civilian
As Palestinian Media Watch has reported many times, the Palestinian Authority regularly denies reality in order to promote its political objectives and to demonize Israel in particular.

Israel is fighting an active war against terror in the Gaza Strip. On June 1, 2024, Israel found rocket launchers and a weapons depot in Rafah in southern Gaza. On May 26, eight rockets were fired from Gaza at central Israel. On May 21, IDF troops found a cache of rockets and launchers in a mosque in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. Some 121 hostages are still being held there by Hamas. Hundreds of IDF soldiers have been killed in the fighting. Yet, senior PA official Mahmoud Al-Habbash still has the audacity to claim that “all the institutions and facilities in the Gaza Strip are civilian facilities.”



Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “Israel… is not attempting to implement any measures to protect the [Palestinian] civilians nor taking any action for that purpose. The proof is all the civilian victims who will fall in the Gaza Strip and who have fallen since the start of the [Israeli] aggression in October [2023] until now (i.e., in the 2023 Gaza war). The Gaza Strip is tantamount to a civilian human bloc. All the institutions and facilities in the Gaza Strip are civilian facilities.”

[PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, May 23, 2024]

Al-Habbash’s statement is of course completely false. Just one day prior to his claim, Hamas’ military wing itself issued a statement that “Al-Qassam fighters managed to snipe 3 Zionist soldiers in northern Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip and killed 2 Zionist soldiers at point-blank range in the Brazil neighborhood southeast of Rafah city” [Middle East Monitor, May 22, 2024]. Hamas is proud that it still maintains military capabilities in both the northern and southern Gaza Strip.

On one hand, it is bizarre that a senior PA official would deny overt Hamas activities in Gaza. Then again, if the PA is able to get away with successfully claiming that all Palestinian activities in Gaza are civilian, it can then libel Israel with accusations of wanton murder. After all, it is a fundamental of PA libels: Never hesitate to falsify reality if doing so enables demonization of Israel.
PMW: PA names hall after arch-terrorist Abu Jihad, whom it admires for planning murder of 125
Until Hamas’ massacre against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Coastal Road terror attack was the most lethal in Israel’s history. Fatah terrorists from Lebanon hijacked a bus full of Israeli civilians on vacation and murdered 37, of whom 12 were children. Arch-terrorist Abu Jihad planned and supervised the attack, which was led by female terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.

The PA has praised Abu Jihad for orchestrating the murder of at least 125 Israelis, and Palestinian Media Watch has documented how the PA has turned him into a role model for Palestinian society. Posthumously, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas awarded Abu Jihad the Star of Honor.

Last week, the PA yet again cemented its view of Abu Jihad as a hero and admirable figure for Palestinians by inaugurating a hall in Ramallah named after him. One of the walls in the hall is adorned with a photo of the arch-terrorist and the Fatah logo, which includes the PA map of Palestine that erases all of Israel under crossed rifles. (Photos above and below)

PA’s Ramallah District Governor Dr. Laila Ghannam was present at the event (left in lower photo), as was top Fatah official Abbas Zaki (upper photo), who gave a speech. Additional Fatah officials were also present:


Posted text: “[Fatah Central Committee member] Abbas Zaki during the inauguration of Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir ‘Abu Jihad’ Hall (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 125) in Ramallah, which was held by the Fatah Movement’s Ramallah Al-Tahta sub-branch in the presence of Ramallah and El-Bireh District Governor Dr. Laila Ghannam, [Fatah] Ramallah and El-Bireh Branch Secretary Muwaffaq Sahwil, the Ramallah mayor, and a number of religious and important figures.”

[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, May 27, 2024]
Palestinian President Denounces Iran’s Supreme Leader for Supporting Gaza War
Tehran’s support for Hamas is undermining the Palestinian goal of independence, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), said on June 3, in a rebuke of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Abbas’s statement came after Khamenei delivered a speech endorsing the October 7 massacre in southern Israel and rejecting efforts to reach a ceasefire. “Our region was very much in need of this attack,” Khamenei said, referring to October 7. According to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, Abbas replied that the Palestinian people are paying the price for the war. “What we want is to end the occupation and embody our independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and not policies that do not serve the Palestinian national goals,” Abbas said.

Expert Analysis
“Abbas is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, he is benefiting from Iran’s war on Israel because the West is responding with offers of a Palestinian state; on the other hand, Iran and its terror proxies are bringing unending suffering to the Palestinian people. Notably, he won’t actually condemn the atrocities of October 7 or recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

“For over three years, Iran has been supporting a network of proxies and clients in the West Bank, deliberately sowing discord and instability. The fact that the Palestinian Authority has only recently begun to speak out publicly against Iran’s meddling in Palestinian affairs is a stark reminder of their failure to prioritize Palestinian interests. Given the extent of Iran’s interference, the Palestinian Authority must take a more robust stance against Tehran’s meddling rather than simply offering token criticisms.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

The PA’s Response to October 7
On October 7, the PA refrained from condemning the Hamas attack. As Hamas besieged and massacred Israelis, Abbas stressed at a PA emergency meeting that Palestinians had the “right to defend themselves.” On October 9, Abbas’s ruling party, Fatah, released a statement praising the Hamas attacks, calling on all Palestinians to “escalate all the conflict zones.” Only on October 12, following U.S. pressure, did Abbas offer a vague statement condemning the killing of civilians “on both sides.” In the months since, Fatah officials have admitted that members of the group’s armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, participated in the October 7 attack along with Hamas.

PA Blames Hamas and Iran
The PA’s criticism of Iran and Hamas suggests that it now seeks to deflect responsibility. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said in February that world leaders are too preoccupied with October 7. “One should not continue focusing on October 7,” he said. He added, “Palestinian suffering did not start on October 7. Palestinians have been suffering for the last 75 years.” In May, Abbas blamed Hamas for Israel’s invasion of Gaza. “The military action that Hamas carried out, at its own decision, on that day, October 7, gave Israel even more excuses and reasons to attack in the Gaza Strip, an attack it has continued with full force, with murder, destruction and uprooting,” Abbas said.


Tunisia Bans Palestinian Keffiyehs During Final Exams, Citing Cheating Concerns
Tunisia's education ministry announced on Sunday that undergraduates would be barred from wearing the iconic Palestinian keffiyeh scarf during final exams, which start next Wednesday. In its official announcement of the ban, the ministry reaffirmed its support for the Palestinians, adding that "the attempt of some to exploit this issue to introduce confusion in the conduct of national exams or to use it to commit disguised fraud is subject to the law."
Yemen's Houthis Training to Invade Israel
Yemen's Houthis have in recent months carried out a series of training exercises to prepare for a potential invasion of Israel.

Israel's Channel 11 aired footage of Houthi forces in a live fire exercise training to conquer the city of Dimona in Israel.

Armed men were seen running house to house in a large mockup of an urban area.

A Yemeni journalist noted that the drills are also aimed at preparing for any direct confrontation with the U.S., UK, or UAE.

Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi says the Houthi army can muster 350,000 fighters.

Al-Houthi said a request had been made to the countries between Yemen and Israel that they "open land passages for the movement of hundreds of thousands of my people in order to carry out jihad in Palestine."
UN atomic agency passes resolution demanding Iranian cooperation on nuclear program
The United Nations nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution on Wednesday calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the monitor and reverse its recent barring of inspectors, despite concerns Tehran would respond with atomic escalation.

Twenty countries voted in favor and two against — Russia and China — with 12 abstentions, diplomats said. It follows up on the last resolution 18 months ago that ordered Iran to comply with a years-long International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation into uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

While the number of sites under investigation has been narrowed to two from three, Iran still has yet to give the IAEA satisfactory answers on how the traces got there.

“The need for the Board to hold Iran accountable to its legal obligations is long overdue. Iran must urgently, fully and unambiguously co-operate with the Agency,” Britain, France and Germany said in a statement to the Board on the resolution they proposed.

Since the last resolution the list of problems the IAEA faces in Iran has grown, and the new text also called on Iran to address several of those issues.

Censure resolutions by the IAEA board are not legally binding but send a strong political and diplomatic message.
Britain should join attacks on Iranian territory, says think tank
Britain should join with America and Israel in carrying out strikes on Iran to retaliate against its proxies and “destabilise” the country’s regime, a think tank has said.

The Henry Jackson Society said that the existing policy of deterrence had “failed spectacularly” and that the US and its allies had to threaten the Iranian regime’s “sense of survivability” to rein it in.

A report from the UK-based transatlantic foreign policy and national security think tank says that the West’s policy towards Iran lies “in tatters”, with the regime carrying out a range of “malign activities” including “taking hostages, seizing ships, firing missiles at US military vessels and firing missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia via Yemen”.

On April 13, Tehran launched its first direct assault on Israel, and Iran is also “on the brink of acquiring a nuclear weapon” and could have a “crude nuclear device” within six months, the report warns.

“For too long, Iranian aggression has been unchallenged,” it says.

“Even when the US has been directly targeted by Iranian proxies, successive administrations have refused to respond directly to Iran and hold the regime accountable.

“The strategy was to localise conflict, avoid regional escalation and prevent broader war from breaking out in the Middle East.

“Ironically, it has led to the exact opposite. By attempting to prevent war, the US has encouraged conflict to erupt.”


Empty Doorposts
The number of antisemitic acts in France has soared after the Hamas massacres in Israel, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 since Oct. 7. As a result, the mezuzah has become a mark of Jewishness that, instead of protecting the occupants of a home, can become an invitation to antisemitic attacks such as the one that took place in the 20th arrondissement of Paris at the home of an elderly Jewish couple whose door, with its mezuzah, was set on fire.

Many Jews have reluctantly removed their mezuzot from outside their homes and put them inside. Some refuse to do so, so as not to be overcome by fear.

As a photographer, I have long been documenting the phenomenon of antisemitism in France. In the 1980s, it was manifested in the form of attacks perpetrated by Palestinians at Goldenberg’s deli, the rue Copernic synagogue, in Carpentras, at the Bagneux Jewish cemetery, and elsewhere, triggering huge demonstrations of support—but also in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s disturbing far-right political party, which was openly antisemitic and negationist. Since the 1990s, France has been witnessing a new and more pervasive form of antisemitism, not imported from abroad but coming from French people of Arab Muslim origin.

When I learned that some Jews were removing their mezuzahs from outside their homes, some even removing their names from their mailboxes, I had the idea of photographing the traces of these mezuzot.

I started by talking to Jewish friends and acquaintances about it, then I tried a few more institutional contacts, such as a Jewish radio station, a rabbi, a Jewish museum. None of these official leads came to anything. Only my personal contacts worked. My first missing mezuzah came through a friend whose daughter Hannah, a student, immediately agreed to let me visit her and her flatmate.

Word of mouth started to spread. Some people recommended me to their son, to an elderly cousin. This photographic essay is therefore not representative of the Jewish community as a whole but rather of an enlarged circle of practicing or just believing friends.


Israeli MMA fighter survives assassination attempt in Ukraine
Israeli MMA fighter Haim Gozali published on Sunday footage showing him hiding on a hotel roof after escaping from an assassination attempt in Ukraine last week.

Gozali, survived the assassination attempt in Ukraine last week while staying at a hotel with his son, Elad, and his coach, Ben El Hasid. The three managed to escape the scene of the assassination attempt and were assisted by local police.

Gozali, his son, and his coach were in Ukraine for a competition in the city near the border with Romania, N12 reported on Sunday. Shortly after they arrived at the hotel, the incident occurred, leaving the three stranded on the roof while local police handled the situation. Deported from the Ukraine

Following the incident, Golazi told the media, “The police tried to silence the incident and did not allow us to stay in the country. We were immediately deported. Since the beginning of the war, over 100 propaganda videos were made about me in the Muslim world. Many of them are [MMA] fighters, so they’d know when I'm participating in the same competition as them”

Shortly after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Gozali wrote the names of four UFC fighters who are Muslim on a bomb and posted an image on social media, which has since been taken down, Fox News reported at the beginning of November.


The face of hate Antisemitic attacker calls NYC rabbi ‘dirty Jew,’ bashes him with bag outside synagogue
A prominent rabbi was attacked by a backpack-slinging antisemite outside his Manhattan synagogue Tuesday after asking the man to put his dog on a leash.

Rabbi Chezky Wolff started recording the stranger after the man allegedly called him a “dirty Jew” just outside the doors of the Chelsea Shul on West 23rd between 6th and 7th avenues.

That’s when the accused assailant slugged Wolff in the head with his tote bag, knocking off his glasses and yarmulke, video obtained by The Post shows.

Wolff pursued the man — who wore sunglasses, a blue baseball cap with a South Korean flag and blue pants — and demanded to know why the man would resort to vicious antisemitic language and behavior.

The stranger appeared unbothered as he ducked into an apartment building on the same block as the synagogue.

Cops and paramedics responded, but the NYPD didn’t have details about the incident available Tuesday night.

“He’s hiding in his Chelsea high-rise until they identify him,” Wolff’s lawyer, Cary London of Shulman & Hill, told The Post.
State trooper with giant Hitler-related neck tattoo fired following probe into white supremacist ties
A New Jersey state trooper with a giant neck tattoo citing a well-known Hitler Youth slogan was fired by the department last year following an investigation into the ink and his other white supremacist-linked tattoos.

Trooper Jason Dare was let go from the department on Nov. 27 after nearly two decades on the job, according to a newly published annual state police disciplinary report and an NJ.com report.

Dare’s shocking body art was only flagged by the department after New Jersey State Police put out a public missing persons alert for the trooper in March 2023 after he left a Pennsylvania medical facility and disappeared.

The detective, who was described as “missing and endangered” in the alert, was found safe days later.

Yet it wasn’t his disappearance that was noticed by the public — but the massive “Blood Honor” text written across the bottom of his neck, which was visible in a photo the department shared with his missing persons report.

“Blood and honor” was the motto adopted by the Hitler Youth during World War II as noted by social media users who commented on the state police’s post hoping to find Dare.

Internet sleuths later found photos on Dare’s Facebook page that revealed he had more troublesome ink, including Iron Crosses on his wrists and a pit bull illustration matching the logo of a Pennsylvania-based white supremacist group, the Keystone State Skinheads, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

He had also shared posts on Facebook alluding to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.
UK Police officer sentenced to unpaid work for pro-Hamas WhatsApp
Mohammed Adil, a 26-year-old who served as a West Yorkshire Police Officer in the United Kingdom, was sentenced on Tuesday to an 18 month-long Community Order at Westminster Magistrates Court for sharing messages in support of the Hamas terrorist group, the UK’s counter-terrorism police announced on Tuesday.

Adil pleaded guilty on Thursday to “two charges of publishing an image in such circumstances as to arouse a reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation, namely Hamas, contrary to section 13(1A) Terrorism Act 2000.”

The Community Order requires Adil to complete up to 35 days of rehabilitation activity and 160 hours of unpaid work.

Adil avoided receiving a prison sentence after telling the court he planned to retrain and study for a PhD, Sky News reported.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK and under the Terrorism Act support for the group can lead to up to 14 years imprisonment and or a fine.

Adil shared the pro-Hamas WhatsApp messages on during October and November of 2023. One message featured former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and rockets being launched with the text caption "rockets to Israel," Sky News reported. Another message featured a video describing purifying the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem from "the abomination of the Jews," and the "aggressive Zionists," according to English subtitles of the video.

A November 7 post featured a man stating in Arabic "Until Muslims fight the Jews, Muslims who are people of creed, people of faith, will kill them," according to a subtitled translation cited by Sky.

Proceedings began against Adil after his fellow officers reported the messages on November 6th.


German software giant SAP inks deal to buy Israel’s WalkMe for $1.5 billion
German business software maker SAP has inked an agreement to buy Israel’s WalkMe Ltd., a developer of a digital adoption platform, in a deal worth $1.5 billion.

Under the terms of the agreement, SAP will pay $14 per share in an all-cash transaction, or a total equity value of about $1.5 billion for WalkMe. The offer price represents a 45 percent premium to the Tel Aviv startup’s closing share price on June 4, but is lower than its market cap of $886 million.

Founded in 2011 by CEO Dan Adika, President Rephael Sweary, Eyal Cohen and Yuval Shalom Ozanna, WalkMe started as a maker of software that helps website owners and software developers create interactive onscreen guidance for users to complete complex tasks.

Traded on the Nasdaq since 2021, the startup in recent years developed a cloud-based user interface for the adoption of multiple digital assets, that is geared to facilitate software learning and improve workflows for employees. The digital adoption platform can be tailored to provide guidance to users such as software training for new apps, or to on-board new employees.

“Applications, processes, data and people are the four key elements of a successful business transformation,” said SAP CEO Christian Klein. “By acquiring WalkMe, we are doubling down on the support we provide our end users, helping them to quickly adopt new solutions and features to get the maximum value out of their IT investments.”
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood rejects calls to cancel tour with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa
The musician Jonny Greenwood was pushing back on critics who said he should abandon a plan to tour with an Israeli collaborator because of the Israel-Hamas war.

Greenwood and Dudu Tassa, an Israeli rock star from a prominent Mizrahi musical family, were scheduled to perform together on the European festival circuit this summer, a year after they released a joint record that featured singers from across the Middle East. Some of the dates were rescheduled after the pair canceled shows in the immediate wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

The performances are drawing criticism amid widespread anti-Israel sentiment in the arts and in Europe, and Greenwood has faced calls to cancel.

In a statement posted to social media on Tuesday, he said he would do no such thing - and said that calls to silence Israeli artists are counterproductive.

“Others choose to believe this kind of project is unjustifiable and are urging the silence of this - or any - artistic effort made by Israeli Jews,” Greenwood wrote. “But I can’t join that call: The silencing of Israeli film makers/musicians/dancers when their work tours abroad - especially when it’s at the urging of their fellow western filmmakers/musicians/artists - feels unprogressive to me, not least because these people that are invariably the most progressive members of any society.”

Greenwood’s relationship to Israel is long. He is married to Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, who has said the family identifies as Jewish, and recorded guitar on albums by Tassa and fellow Israeli Shye Ben Tzur before making the album with Tassa. Both artists opened for Radiohead on some tour dates in 2017.


Wondering Jews Podcast: Wondering about Zionism with Haviv Rettig Gur
What does Zionism mean to you? What does it mean to the Jewish people and the world at large? Noam and Mijal welcome special guest journalist Haviv Rettig Gur to delve into the history of Zionism as a means of survival for the Jewish people while pondering Western and Palestinian misunderstandings of Zionism. In this thought-provoking episode, they discuss self-determination, resilience, and Jewish identity.


The JEWS are NOT the Indigenous People of the Land of Israel (But then who is?)



An American Jewish Soldier Who Was Buried among Germans Has Been Finally Given a Proper Resting Place
A Jewish-American World War II hero who stormed Utah beach on D-Day and went missing after being ambushed in the Battle of Cherbourg has finally been found — in a German mass grave where he was buried with Nazis.

Now, eight decades after his death on June 23, 1944, Lt. Nathan Baskind will finally receive a proper burial.

Baskind, the son of Lithuanian and Russian immigrants who settled in Pittsburgh and owned a wallpaper business, was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 at the age of 26, according to Raugh Jewish Archives.

“He came from a successful family, he could have gotten out of [the war] if he wanted to,” said Shalom Lamm, co-founder of Operation Benjamin, a non-profit that identifies Jewish U.S. war veterans buried under mistaken religious designations at American military cemeteries.

Baskind commanded four M-10 tank destroyers — modified Sherman tanks— in the US Army’s 899th Tank Destroyer battalion during the bloody D-Day invasion.

After taking the beachhead, Allied forces set their sights on the port city of Cherbourg, France.

As US troops engaged in fierce battles with Nazi soldiers, who were ordered by Adolf Hitler to hold the city at all costs, Baskind went behind enemy lines accompanied only by his driver on a reconnaissance mission.

They were ambushed.

The driver managed to get back to Allied lines despite being “seriously wounded,” and told how Baskind had been hit by machine-gun and rifle fire and was presumed dead, according to Baskind’s personnel file at the National Archives.

US troops conducted a thorough search but found “no trace of Lt. Baskind or his vehicle,” the file says.

He was listed as Missing in Action and on July 13, 1944, and was promoted posthumously from second to first lieutenant.

He was also awarded a Purple Heart.

Baskind’s name was added to the Wall of the Missing at the American Cemetery at Normandy, and what exactly happened to him would remain a mystery for eight decades.


A liberator of the Western Wall: Remembering Abe Halon
Three times a day Jews from all four corners of the earth direct their prayers toward the Old City of Jerusalem. In the heart of the city’s Jewish quarter is the Western Wall, the only remnant still standing of the glorious ancient temple.

Our sages say the shechinah, God’s divine presence, never left the Western Wall. Amid the wall’s worn stones and whispered prayers, Jews find spiritual connection not only with each other but with generations past.

For 1,900 years, Jews were not allowed access to Judaism’s most sacred site except on rare occasions and were often barred from praying there openly. In fact, the wide plaza that welcomed guests and pilgrims was built over with homes, leaving only a small alleyway where the wall could be accessed, seen, and felt.

This all changed in 1967 during the Six Day War, when Israel defeated the combined forces of the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies, and the Old City was returned to Jewish hands for the first time in two millennia. The Western Wall was open for Jews to pray freely and proudly once again. Perhaps not since the revelation at Mount Sinai had the Jews been united as they were then.

One of the brave people who made that possible and touched the hearts of so many in our Jewish community is Avraham ben Dov Halon, who passed away on May 19 at age 77.

Born in 1946 in what would soon become Israel, Avraham, or Abe as he was known, was among the pioneers who grew up in the newly reborn Jewish state. As a young soldier serving in the IDF, Abe became a sergeant in the 66th Battalion, 55th Paratroopers Brigade, the unit that famously recaptured Jerusalem under renowned general Uzi Narkiss.




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