Thursday, July 18, 2024

07/18 Links Pt2: Uncover the Blood in Buenos Aires; ICJ Head Condemned Israel 210 Times as Lebanon’s UN Rep, Sided With Iran, Syria; Adidas Dumps 1972 Olympic Shoe Relaunch

From Ian:

Israel-Bashing on the Agenda for National Teachers Union
A series of anti-Israel resolutions proposed by members of the second biggest teachers union in America has other members in revolt, saying they target Jews and “libel the Jewish state.”

The resolutions before the American Federation of Teachers include calls to “halt U.S. military aid to Israel” and to “stop enabling genocide,” and include praise of pro-Palestinian protesters who faced “state-sanctioned violence.”

They accuse the Jewish state of “apartheid” and “genocide,” and criticize Israel for “scholasticide,” a term referencing the destruction of schools in Gaza. One resolution calls for the AFT to divest from the Jewish state by pulling member pensions out of companies with even tangential connections to Israel—such as Boeing and Palantir. Of the eight proposed resolutions that mention Israel, only one advocates for a “two-state solution” and the “safe return of Hamas’s hostages.”

The union, which represents 1.7 million members, will vote on the resolutions at its annual convention, which begins in Houston on July 22.

Now, a group of members is circulating an anonymous letter, hoping to convince union leaders to drop the inflammatory resolutions and “avoid the public stain of antisemitism.”

Anti-Israel resolutions from members of a teachers union are mostly symbolic and, if approved, won’t have any impact on Israel’s policy in Gaza or the West Bank. But what’s alarming is the extent to which they reflect the mindset of some teachers, said Tova Plaut, an AFT member and Jewish educator in New York City.

Plaut fears the resolutions would have a spillover effect, encouraging teachers to portray “Israel as a colonizing country that is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.” And she added the resolutions send a signal: “It’s telling their members this is what we want you to teach about.”

As Robert Pondiscio reported for The Free Press in June, this is already a problem in U.S. public schools. According to an Anti-Defamation League complaint, teachers in Fort Lee High School in New Jersey tell students that the terrorist group Hamas is a peaceful “resistance movement,” while teachers in Berkeley, California, “indoctrinat[e] students with antisemitic tropes.”
Adidas Dumps 1972 Olympic Shoe Relaunch Featuring Palestinian Model Bella Hadid After Campaign Branded ‘Antisemitic’
Adidas apologized for placing a Palestinian-American model, Bella Hadid, who has a long history of antisemitic comments, as the face of its campaign to relaunch a shoe first introduced ahead of the 1972 Olympics — during which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

“We are conscious that connections have been made to tragic historical events — though these are completely unintentional — and we apologize for any upset or distress caused,” a representative for the German shoe company told the Washington Times on Thursday.

They also announced that they will be revising the remainder of the campaign. “We believe in sport as a unifying force around the world and will continue our efforts to champion diversity and equality in everything we do,” they added.

The shoe campaign, released earlier this week, was met with outrage by members of the Jewish community and even caught the eyes of Israel’s foreign ministry.

“She and her father frequently promote blood libels and antisemitic conspiracies against Jews,” the official account for the State of Israel, run by Israel’s foreign ministry, wrote about Ms. Hadid on X.

Adidas’s apology comes after multiple Jewish advocacy groups called for the German sneaker company to drop the campaign.
Australia has a problem with Islamic sectarianism
Sectarianism is playing a growing role in Western elections. In the UK, several ‘pro-Gaza’ independents were elected in former Labour seats in this month’s General Election. All of them were supported by an organisation called The Muslim Vote (TMV), and all stood as essentially single-issue candidates. Many others supported by TMV, such as Akhmed Yakoob in Birmingham Ladywood, reeled in huge support and came close to unseating prominent Labour MPs. These races were tainted by intimidation and harassment-heavy campaigning, largely directed at Labour candidates accused of being insufficiently critical of Israel.

Throughout the campaign, TMV made no attempt to appeal to non-Muslim voters. ‘This election signals a shift – Muslim issues at the forefront’, it said on its website during the campaign. ‘We will no longer tolerate being taken for granted. We are a powerful, united force of four million acting in unison.’ This unashamedly sectarian message was also reinforced after the election. In its boastful ‘analysis’, TMV said: ‘We take one step towards the almighty, and then his help comes raining down.’

It wasn’t all good news for TMV, however. It went on to say, with palpable disappointment, that ‘many in our community still decided to vote Labour… despite the shadow of Gaza hanging over us’. The implication of this statement is hard to ignore. Muslims, apparently unique among the voting public, shouldn’t make up their own minds on political issues and vote accordingly. Instead, TMV seems to be suggesting that elections should be a competition between religions – a fight to see which faith can mobilise adherents to vote for its chosen candidate. How could anyone with the faintest understanding of history think this is desirable?

The dark shadow of religious identity politics appears to be spreading across the West. In Australia, a new campaign group has emerged, also called The Muslim Vote, which mirrors its British counterpart almost exactly. The websites of the UK and Australia chapters are essentially identical.

TMV Australia has already begun selecting candidates for next year’s federal election. These are expected to challenge at least six Labor Party seats in Sydney and Melbourne, electorates with large Muslim populations. Frontbenchers Tony Burke and Jason Clare are considered at risk, while many in the government hold dim hopes for Peter Khalil’s seat in Melbourne’s inner-north.

Like its UK counterpart, TMV Australia’s pitch is solely directed at Muslim voters. The threat to politicians who fail to march to the beat of its anti-Israel drum is also echoed:

‘We will no longer accept being taken for granted. Australian Muslims are a powerful, united force of nearly one million acting in unison. The Muslim Vote alone is capable of forcing the current government into a minority government.’

If the UK General Election is anything to go by, this sectarianism could be a recipe for stoking hatred and division in Australia’s next elections.

Unsurprisingly, TMV Australia has thrown its support behind rookie senator Fatima Payman, a 29-year-old Muslim senator who quit the Labor Party a few weeks ago. Earlier this month, she was indefinitely suspended by Labor for repeatedly defying the party line, by accusing Israel of genocide, voting for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and voting to recognise a Palestinian state. She even chanted ‘From the river to the sea’ in a speech in the senate.


Melanie Phillips: ‘Anti-Zionism is a dagger at the heart of the Jewish people’
Whatever happened to ‘Never Again’? After the Second World War, the West vowed that it would not allow the crimes of the Holocaust to be repeated. It promised that it would be vigilant in confronting anti-Semitism. And yet, 7 October 2023 – the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – led not to a mass outpouring of solidarity with the world’s only Jewish state, but to demands to wipe it off the map. Vast swathes of the political and cultural elite have declared themselves to be ‘anti-Zionist’. They have all but sided with Israel’s enemies abroad. And they have, at best, turned a blind eye to anti-Semitism at home.

Times columnist Melanie Phillips returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show for a special live episode to discuss the West’s anti-Semitism problem and much more. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation.

Brendan O’Neill: Is the growth of anti-Zionism in the West symptomatic of the growth of anti-Semitism more broadly?

Melanie Phillips: Anti-Zionism is a polite fiction, designed to conceal the fact that people want to hate Jews. In theory, of course, it is distinct from anti-Semitism. That is, if you take Zionism to be nothing more than a political movement that began in the 19th century. But this is simply no longer the case. Zionism is a movement for the self-determination of Jewish people in their homeland. And no other group on Earth is told, as the Jews often are, that they are not entitled to a homeland.

Self-determination for Jews in Israel is an essential component of Judaism itself. That doesn’t mean that all Jews are Zionists. That doesn’t mean that all Jews want to live in Israel. And it doesn’t mean all Jews support Israel. But it does mean that anti-Zionism, in many ways, is a dagger to the heart of Judaism. It deprives the Jews of their home.

People often respond to this by saying that a lot of Jews are anti-Zionists today and that many Jews were opposed to Zionism at the turn of the 20th century. That is absolutely correct. But there is a tremendous difference between then and now. These Jews were anti-Zionists before the Holocaust and before Israel existed. They made their case before people even began to understand that the Arab and Muslim world was determined to remove all Jews from their homeland. The context now is that anti-Zionism would entail the destruction of Israel – a state that is essential for the continuation of the Jewish people because, crucially, other countries would not take Jews in.

O’Neill: To what extent do you think identity politics feeds into anti-Semitism?

Phillips: The intersectionality doctrine, which emphasises overlapping victim groups, absolutely plays into anti-Semitism by idiotically dividing the world into the powerful and powerless.

However, I started getting really worried about this hatred long before ‘intersectionality’ existed. In fact, this eruption of ‘progressive’ anti-Semitism predates the rise of identitarian ideology by decades. I first became aware of it in 1982, particularly among those on the left. They were all pretending that it was about Israel, when it was really about Jews. This was also around the time that I first heard cries that Israelis were Nazis – a monstrous charge by any rational definition.
UN Watch: Report: Head of World Court Condemned Israel 210 Times as Lebanon’s UN Rep, Sided With Regimes in Iran, Syria, Belarus, Cuba
The president of the International Court of Justice, which is tomorrow releasing an opinion in another politically-motivated case targeting Israel, voted 210 times to condemn the Jewish state when he served as Lebanon’s UN ambassador, and delivered inflammatory speeches accusing “terrorist Jewish organizations” of committing “organized massacres,” according to a new report by the non-governmental organization UN Watch.

On Friday at 15:00 in The Hague, the ICJ will release an advisory opinion that is expected to conclude that Israel occupies the West Bank in violation of international law. The opinion was requested by a Palestinian-sponsored resolution of the UN General Assembly.

But according to the new report by UN Watch, the head of the court has a long record of anti-Israel votes and statements.

Under the clear rules of the ICJ Charter, he is legally disqualified from sitting in judgment on the two cases related to Israel, said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based organization.

Nawaf Salam was elected president of the ICJ in February 2024. He first joined the court as a judge in February 2018, following his 11-year tenure as Lebanon’s ambassador to the UN.

Today’s report by UN Watch, an independent monitoring organization based in Geneva, analyzed Salam’s record as Lebanese envoy from 2007 to 2017, and found compelling evidence — based on hundreds of UN votes, speeches and other statements — showing that he is not a fair and impartial arbiter of justice on issues related to Israel or human rights.

Key findings on Nawaf Salam’s bias against Israel:
During his time as Lebanon’s representative to the UN, Salam voted to condemn Israel 210 times.
These resolutions contained one-sided denunciations of Israel, and gave a free pass to Hamas. For example, in December 2008, Salam voted for a resolution that accused Israel of “acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction” against Palestinians, yet made no mention of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Another resolution that Nawaf supported, in 2017, accused Israel of “systematic violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people,” and “causing death and injury to Palestinian civilians, including children, women and non-violent, peaceful demonstrators.”
In his speeches to the UN, Salam also made many inflammatory statements that demonstrate extreme bias against Israel. In January 2008, Salam accused “terrorist Jewish organizations” of committing “massacres.” He also said that Gaza was an “open air prison.”
In a November 2008 UN speech, Salam said the “supreme Zionist leadership” pursued a plan of “ethnic cleansing” through “terrorism and organized massacres.”
In November 2009, Salam told the UN General Assembly that “for too long [Israel’s] war criminals have benefited from impunity”; and Israel was guilty of “flagrant disrespect for international law.”
In 2011, he accused Israel of “illegitimate actions.”
On June 13, 2014, Salam accused Israel of “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes.”
On June 18, 2014, Salam opposed the candidacy of Israel to the vice-presidency of the General Assembly’s Fourth Committee, on the grounds that it is “the most condemned country” at the General Assembly and that it continues to “violate the rules of the international community.” Salam said that Israel was not eligible for election “to any office” at the UN.
On numerous occasions, including November 2016, Salam has accused Israel of “apartheid.”
Salam has also repeatedly attacked Israel on social media. In 2015, on Twitter he called Israel a “Triumph of blatant racist & colonialist choices.”
In 2016, in reference to the 2006 war launched by Hezbollah, Salam accused Israel of using “the most vicious & disgusting weapons of all times.” He never once condemned Hezbollah for launching the war, or for attacking Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets. On the contrary, Salam inverted the cause of the war, writing falsely that it was Israel that “launched a 33 day war against my country…”


ICJ President Nawaf Salam accused "terrorist Jewish organisations" of "massacres" (2008)

ICJ President Nawaf Salam said Israeli "war criminals" have too long benefited from impunity

ICJ President Nawaf Salam justifies Palestinian violence

ICJ President Nawaf Salam condemns Israeli "savage assault" and "indiscriminate killing"

ICJ President Nawaf Salam accused Israel of "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" (2014)

ICJ President Nawaf Salam accused Israel of "Apartheid" (2016)

Report by lawyers behind ICJ ‘genocide’ case urges banning Israel from world soccer
A legal analysis penned by two South African scholars has claimed that Israel must be banned from any soccer-related activities for violating FIFA’s statutes amid the war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

Both lawyers behind the report, who specialize in international law and human rights, are also part of the legal team currently accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Attorney Max du Plessis cowrote the analysis along with Sarah Pudifin-Jones at the behest of Eko, a social justice nonprofit organization.

The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) submitted a proposal to suspend Israel in May, with FIFA ordering an urgent legal evaluation while promising to address it at an extraordinary meeting of its council set to take place this Saturday.

The Asian Football Confederation had also given its backing for action against Israel and PFA President Jibril Rajoub said that FIFA could not afford to remain indifferent to “violations or to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”
Uncover the Blood in Buenos Aires
“O earth,” Job pleaded, “do not cover my blood, and let there be no resting place for my cry.”

Today is the 30th painful anniversary of the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured 300. The blood still seeps up out of the ground, and the cries remain unstilled. The AMIA bombing was the greatest attack against the Jewish community in the diaspora since the Holocaust.

In those 30 years, one Argentine leader after another has tried to bury that blood, and has tried to still those cries. But that blood will continue seeping out of the ground, and those cries will remain unstilled, until the earth those leaders have heaped on the dead to cover up the truth of what happened—the truth of who did the killing and who in the government abetted it—is swept away.

A day after the attack, I flew to Argentina. It was as if something—someone, a congregation of holy souls and their bereaved families—was calling me. While there, I met privately with then-President of Argentina Carlos Menem.

My first words to him were, “Mr. President, why Buenos Aires a second time?” Here I was referring to a similar attack against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires two years earlier, which killed 29 people. My message was clear: If terrorists are not quickly apprehended, prosecuted and punished, they are emboldened to strike again. Sensing that I was charging him with a cover-up, Menem pushed back, insisting that Argentina would find the truth. But over the years he did all he could to try to bury the blood and the screams with ever more earth.

And, during a trip back to Buenos Aires a year later, as I was trying to console the victims’ families in their undying grief, and trying to unearth the truth, Menem’s underlings attempted to shut me up. During that visit, Juan Jose Galeano, the person appointed as special prosecutor for the AMIA case, in effect arrested me, hauling me into his office where he held me for six hours. All this, I believe, was meant as a warning that I would be well-advised to stop accusing Menem of covering up. In time, Galeano was dismissed from his post and found guilty of concealing and violating evidence.

Nor did it end there. With the blood still seeping out of the ground, and the cries still reaching out from the earth, another Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, tried once again to bury history by signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Iran to jointly investigate the bombing—an idea as absurd as asking al-Qaida to investigate the pilots who flew into the World Trade Center or asking Hamas to investigate the barbaric Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Indeed, Alberto Nisman, the courageous federal prosecutor who replaced Galeano, railed against the memorandum’s architects—identifying eight high-ranking Iranian officials including the former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as being involved in the AMIA attack, and added a Hezbollah operative, Imad Mughniyeh, then the head of the terrorist group’s “external security” branch.

In January 2015, Nisman was about to present evidence proving Kirchner’s role in the cover-up and revealing the bloody hand of Hezbollah backed by Iran. A day before his scheduled appearance, he was assassinated. He had become AMIA’s 86th victim.

At this year’s commemoration ceremony in Buenos Aires, as in previous years, each victim’s name will be read aloud, with the crowd respectfully but firmly responding “presente.” The dead are present—in our hearts, in our souls. They continue to inspire. They still count. They continue to cry out from the ground the biblical imperative, “justice, justice, you shall pursue.”

All eyes will be on Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, wondering if he will make good on his warm relations with the Jewish community in Argentina and Israel, and see to it that justice be done. Milei recently announced that Argentina is designating Hamas as a terrorist organization (as Argentina did with Hezbollah in 2019). While this is a good symbolic starting point, if Milei really means business, he must sever diplomatic relations with Iran, which arms, trains, finances and exerts control over its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies.
Unforgiven
Buenos Aires, Argentine autumn of 1994. In his office at the Argentina Zionist Organization (AZO), director Itzik Horn left two copies of the blueprint of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish community center where he would be moving his offices. José Pérez, secretary of the AZO, and also an infiltrated intelligence agent of the Federal Police, discreetly took one of the copies.

In the first week of July, Pérez and Horn visited the AMIA building, in the heart of Once, the city’s Jewish neighborhood, to oversee construction on the AZO’s new offices. Pérez then traveled to Basabilvaso, a town in the central Entre Rios province. On July 18, by chance, he saw on the Crónica news channel one of its catastrophe headlines: “AMIA Bombed.” In what was then the worst attack on a Jewish site since the end of the Shoah, 85 people died and 300 were wounded.

Pérez was immediately afraid. First, for the life of his wife, a Hebrew teacher and community activist, who was supposed to be at AMIA to collect some teaching materials; luckily, he reached her at home, having not yet left. After blowing through the 300 kilometers separating Basabilvaso from the Argentine capital, Pérez saw the victims’ mangled bodies in the morgue. Two days later, he enlisted in an elite group created to defend Jews from another attack in the country with the largest Jewish population in Latin America.

Pérez had nine years of active community life at this point, almost the same amount of time he had served as an infiltrated agent. He had passed information on people and institutions in the Jewish community, building plans and blueprints, and all the information he had collected about the country’s main Jewish association, according to his own legal testimony, which I consulted for this article.

From the AMIA bombing on, according to his version of events, he has felt an unbearable guilt for having funneled material that might have served in planning the attack or in the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in March 1992, which resulted in 22 people killed and more than 240 wounded. In both cases—the embassy and the AMIA bombings—Pérez delivered building characteristics, access points, hours, schedules, security systems, weak points, and methods for entering and exiting without detection. He himself entered both buildings several times before and after the attacks.

Given his particular circumstance of being a Catholic in the process of converting to Judaism and a salaried employee of the Federal Police, he began to contemplate testifying about his infiltration and the information he provided. He waited for 20 years, he said, because of his distrust of the Argentine justice system and the judicial authorities who carried out the investigation.

In July 2014, journalist Gabriel Levinas revealed Pérez’s identity, against his wishes. The spy was then deposed by the prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was investigating the AMIA attack, and was immediately entered into a witness protection program for nearly a decade. In that new life, Pérez saw the Amazon Prime Video series that carries his name—Iosi: The Regretful Spy—which is a liberally fictionalized interpretation of his personal and professional journey.

In December 2023, Pérez decided to exit the witness protection program, a fact confirmed by sources in the Ministry of Justice. Pérez maintained that with the rise of Javier Milei, a U.S.-aligned anarcho-capitalist, security policies have allowed for the return of bad people, namely advisers of Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and others who had pressured him to keep quiet and not testify.
Milei vows to try Iranian AMIA bombing suspects in absentia
Argentine President Javier Milei will submit a bill to try in absentia the Iranian suspects in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded more than 300 others.

“Although they may never be able to serve a sentence, they will not be able to escape the eternal condemnation of a court proving their guilt in front of the whole world,” Milei said at a memorial on Wednesday night, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the attack.

The president said that while the decision in April to issue an arrest warrant for Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi due to his alleged role in the terrorist attack was an “enormous step,” Buenos Aires still had more to do due to the “cover-up by the terrorist state of Iran.”

Milei vowed to beef up intelligence efforts to prevent future attacks and to allocate further government resources towards the AMIA investigation.

“Today we chose to speak out, not stay silent,” he said in his remarks at the memorial. “We’re raising our voice, not folding our arms. We choose life, because anything else is making a game out of death.”

Milei compared Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel—the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—to the 1994 bombing, which has been called the worst modern-day attack against Jews outside Israel.

He also demanded that Hamas release the 120 hostages, including eight Argentines, still held captive in Gaza after 286 days of war.


Justice ‘not yet achieved’ 30 years after Argentina Jewish center bombing, Latino-Jewish Caucus says
Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the co-chairs of the Latino-Jewish Caucus, called for accountability three decades after the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

“It has been 30 years since the AMIA bombing, which was the deadliest terror attack in Argentina’s history and the deadliest antisemitic attack outside Israel since the Holocaust,” the four members of Congress stated. “However, justice for the victims has not yet been achieved.”

“Evidence uncovered by Argentina’s judicial system demonstrates the involvement of Iran and Hezbollah,” the four said, noting that they introduced a resolution stating U.S. solidarity for the Argentinian Jewish community. The resolution also underscored “our commitment to honor the AMIA victims and pursue justice on their behalf,” they said.
The Deadliest Terrorist Attack in Argentina’s History
It’s been 30 years since Hezbollah's attack on the AMIA Jewish Center in Argentina.A survivor and his daughter share their story.


More than 200 congressional staffers voice protest against Netanyahu address
House and Senate staffers signed an anonymous letter calling on Congress to protest or boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Capitol Hill, citing concerns about the war in Gaza.

Organized by the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, the letter was signed by 230 employees from 122 Democratic and Republican congressional offices.

They emphasize that opposing Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress on Wednesday is “an issue of morality,” not politics.

“Citizens, students, and lawmakers across the country and the world have spoken out against the actions of Mr. Netanyahu in his War on Gaza,” the letter reads.

“Israelis have been protesting in the streets for months, decrying his failure to negotiate a ceasefire and release of hostages. We hope you will join your fellow Members of Congress in protest at his speech or in refusing to attend it.”

In May, congressional leaders invited Netanyahu “to share the Israeli government’s vision for defending democracy, combating terror, and establishing a just and lasting peace in the region.”

Some staffers have advocated a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, voicing their stance at demonstrations held in both November 2023 and May.

Numerous Democratic lawmakers have already announced their intentions to protest during Netanyahu’s speech.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), one of the most vocal critics of this conflict, denounced leaders for inviting Netanyahu amid a conflict that has claimed over 38,000 Palestinian lives since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, resulting in around 1,200 deaths and 250 hostages taken.

Last month, Sanders reiterated his decision to boycott the meeting, labeling Netanyahu a “war criminal.”
Proud Jews ‘have gone into their shells’ since Oct. 7, Shopify president says
An anti-Israel protester protested a podcast hosted by the Jewish president of Shopify, to accuse a Jewish guest, who wasn’t talking about Israel, of supporting genocide.

Harley Finkelstein—of the $81.86 billion Ottawa-based e-commerce company Shopify—and his Big Shot co-host David Segal, a Jewish entrepreneur, were conducting a live taping of the podcast on July 12 in Montreal at Startupfest, a gathering of hundreds of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Their guest was Heather Reisman, founder and CEO of Indigo Books and Music, who told the story of her nearly 30-year-old book chain to about 400 people at the conference.

Some 20 minutes into the taping, a man screamed at her, accused her of “funding a genocide” against Palestinians and tried to rush the stage. A security officer tackled the man, who claimed that he was being assaulted.

As some audience members appeared uncomfortable, Reisman held her composure and invited dialogue with him. “Do you want to know the truth?” she asked. The man screamed back that he did, as he was escorted out of the room.

“The truth is we fund education for kids without parents,” she told the audience to applause.

“Can we do more live tapings?” Finkelstein quipped, after the dust had settled. The audience laughed.

After the show concluded, Reisman spoke with JNS as she left the convention center. She said that invited the protester to engage, because he was “spouting something that wasn’t true.”

“I’d rather engage with people,” she said. “Maybe you bring a few people around.”
Marvel Has a Long History of Misleading Fans by Erasing Jewish Characters
Marvel Studios, founded by various American Jews, recently released the first trailer for Captain America: Brave New World.

Amid the excitement for the legendary Captain America saga to continue with Sam Wilson at its helm, Jewish and Israeli Marvel fans noticed something odd: Sabra, Israel’s Captain America, will be portrayed as a former Black Widow instead of the superhuman Mossad agent she was originally intended to be.

However, erasing a character’s Jewish identity is not something that is entirely new to Marvel.

Although a recent Wrap report indicates that Sabra will retain her Israeli background in the film following a backlash from fans, Marvel’s approach to dealing with Sabra highlights a complex relationship between the studio and its portrayal of Jewish characters. In short, Marvel has a history of minimizing Jewish representation in its works.

In Marvel’s upcoming Captain America: Brave New World, the Israeli-born Mossad super-agent Ruth Bar-Seraph, known as Sabra, has been reimagined as a Russian spy. Her powers include super strength, speed, regenerative healing, and the ability to transfer her life energy to others.

Sabra, an Israeli cactus that’s prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside, is symbolic of the Israeli mindset. This significant reinvention intentionally deprives her of her Israeli identity and the deeply rooted Jewish trauma embedded in her story, replacing it with a more convenient narrative.

By sidestepping these crucial elements of Sabra’s heroism, Marvel chooses to sanitize complex identities rather than embracing their power. In light of the ongoing war in Gaza, this erasure is particularly painful, as Israelis and Jews worldwide continue their struggle for authentic representation in the media.

Marvel’s deliberate decision to whitewash Sabra’s identity ignores the genuine, contemporary trauma and historical persecution faced by the Jewish people. The decision underscores that the delegitimization of the Jews and their homeland cannot even be escaped on the big screen.

Marvel’s latest attempt at a Jew-free superhero lineup doesn’t begin with Sabra. It has roots in the X-Men, Avengers, and Moon Knight — all major Marvel movie standouts.
Why Does Northern Ireland Care So Much About the Israel-Palestine Dispute?
In Belfast, there is a large mural dedicated to the story of the Jewish Legion, which fought with the British army during World War I and was led and organized by a philo-Semitic Irish officer named J.H. Patterson. (You can read about his fascinating story at the link below.) The mural brought Kyle Orton to reflect on the strong feelings so many Irish have about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and how they came to see it through the lenses of their own history of bloody internecine warfare:
[T]he battle lines are very clearly drawn: the Protestant Unionists support Israel and the Catholic (at least by background) republican nationalists support the Palestinians, including their most radical and murderous groups. Why is it that such a distant conflict—involving religiously, ethnically, and linguistically different peoples—resonates so powerfully in Northern Ireland?

The Irish Republican Army (IRA), . . . was a component of the Soviet global terrorist apparat, which brought [its members] into close contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Kurdish PKK, the African National Congress (ANC), the Basque ETA, and many other Moscow-loyal “national liberation movements,” as well as the clerical regime in Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), specifically the Lebanon-based IRGC unit, Hizballah. The public face of the Republican movement reflected the milieu in which the IRA/Sinn Fein was covertly moving. (It still does: Ireland has been among the most vocal in supporting the ANC’s political warfare against Israel at the International Court of Justice.)

It was not always like this. Despite anti-Semitism having always been unusually strong and visible in Ireland—Jews in Ireland suffered a boycott 30 years before Jews in Germany—the pre-state Zionist movement supported the Irish republicans. . . . The change came in the 1930s, when Éamon de Valera rose to the leadership of the Free State. De Valera had been a leader of the republican rejectionists, those who opposed the treaty that granted Irish independence at the price of partition, and provoked sectarian tensions by declaring Eire a Catholic state.

When the Zionist leaders, in the face of the escalating horrors of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, accepted the Peel Commission’s recommendation to partition the Palestine Mandate in 1937, De Valera turned on the Jews: no longer were they the equivalent of Irish Catholics, freedom fighters against British imperialism; now, they were akin to the Ulster Protestants, colonists under British protection.
Scotland’s Glasgow Festival of Contemporary Arts Accused of Illegally Discriminating Against Israeli Artists
A group of pro-Israel lawyers in the United Kingdom has accused The Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Arts of discriminating against Israeli artists and performers by not allowing them to participate in Scotland’s biennial event that was held last month.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has called on the Glasgow City Council and the British Council — both of whom funded the festival — to launch an investigation into Glasgow International, the group announced on Thursday. The event, which took place June 7-23, is Scotland’s largest festival for contemporary art. It is held over the course of three weeks every two years across the city of Glasgow. The festival is managed by Glasgow Life, a charity that organizes cultural and sporting events on behalf of the Glasgow City Council.

On June 21, organizers of this year’s Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Arts, who are also employees of Glasgow Life, announced in an open letter published on Instagram that the 2024 event would be organized in accordance with guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel. The organizers also falsely accused Israel of genocide and apartheid, and expressed their support for “Palestinian liberation.”

The open letter was signed by Glasgow Festival Director Richard Birkett, Open Program Convenor Siobhan Carroll, Curator Poi Marr, Assistant Curator Pelumi Odubanjo, and Festival Manager Diana Stevenson. All five of them also signed an open letter in December 2023 — two months after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel — that called for a boycott of Israel and falsely claimed Palestinians are being “assassinated” and “massacred by the Israeli military.”

UKLFI pointed out that Glasgow International’s boycott of Israeli artists and performers this year was in violation of the Equality Act of 2010, which states that it is illegal to discriminate against someone providing a public service by not providing them with the opportunity to publicize, promote, and ticket their performances and works. By not offering Israeli artists and performers contracts to work at or for the festival, Glasgow organizers acted illegally, the group of lawyers said in a letter written to the Glasgow City Council and the British Council.
NGO Monitor: NGO Monitor Correspondence with the Oxford Union
I am responding to your invitation to participate in the series of debates that the Oxford Union is organising on the application of the labels “apartheid” and “genocide” with respect to the more than 190 nation-states that are members of the United Nations, including the UK, Iran, France, Kuwait, Norway, Qatar, Spain, and Egypt.

Although your invitation refers only to Israel, I assume that the Oxford Union would not contribute once again to poisonous hatred by joining those who immorally single-out Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, for demonization. The over 30 nation-states that identify themselves as Christian, many with official churches funded by the state budget and featuring crosses on their flags, or 56 that declare themselves as Islamic including membership in Organization of Islamic Cooperation, would be appropriate topics for debates on claims of discrimination against ethno-national or religious minorities or similar terms.

The cover letter that accompanied the invitation referenced the infamous 1933 Oxford Union debate that voted in favour of the motion “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country,” citing this positively as part of “the tradition of confronting the boldest questions of our time.” That tradition is also described as exploiting the Oxford Union as a platform for crude political propaganda. The histories of this event highlight the fact that the debate took place shortly after Hitler became the German leader, and the Nazis launched the actions and laws targeting the Jewish population. Winston Churchill described the Union’s behaviour in 1933 as an “abject, squalid, shameless avowal… It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom.” Among many other responses, Oxford Professor Alfred Zimmern wrote to the Union president who presided over the travesty: “I hope you do penance every night and every morning for that ill starred Resolution. …” A repetition of this notorious history, recalled with disdain almost a century later, is surely not your intention.

Your letter also cites the 1962 debate – “The Creation of the State of Israel is One of the Mistakes of the Century”. To the extent that this event is remembered, it is an early example of “the new antisemitism” in which the centuries-old theological hate practiced in the framework of Christianity and Islam and directed at individual Jews has been replaced by attacks against the Jewish collective in Israel. The gratuitous labels of “apartheid” and “genocide” add to this edifice, and some might conclude that the leaders and members of the Oxford Union seek to repeat and reinforce the travesties of 1933 and 1962.

Other terms in your cover letter include settlements, barriers, military tactics and policies, etc but, notably, there is no mention of Palestinian terrorist atrocities or repeated declarations of genocidal intentions, also from the Iranian regime – further examined below. The letter also cites “findings [sic] from Human Rights groups and United Nations Reports, concerning Israeli conduct …” highlighting the complicity of these ignoble institutions in the campaigns of lies and political warfare that accompany the brutality of the attacks against Israeli civilians.

Additional questions arising on the debates you are planning concern the terms of reference – specifically the heinous crimes of “apartheid” and “genocide.” The former was coined and applied exclusively to the notorious South African regime. The cynical attempt to mis-apply the “racism” and “apartheid” propaganda labels to Israel and Zionism began under the Soviet Union and Stalin in the 1950s, in alliance with the members of the Arab League. Clearly, the multi-generational Arab-Israeli conflict, including the failed invasion of 1948 by 5 Arab states with the explicit goal of eliminating Israel, has no commonality with South Africa. The attempts to twist the principles of human rights and construct pseudo-international law to weaponize the term trivialize the actual suffering of millions of people under South African apartheid – a moral stain which the Oxford Union, one would hope, would avoid.

The word “genocide” was created in reference to the systematic and mass killing committed by the Nazis, primarily of the Jewish population in Germany and all the territories that fell under control of the German and their antisemitic allies. It has subsequently been applied regarding Cambodia, Rwanda, and Myanmar. Under the façade of international law, and reflected in your proposed debate headline, this term is now exploited to delegitimize responses to military aggression, asymmetric warfare and atrocities directed at civilian populations, such as committed by Hamas and its allies. In contrast, the stream of declarations from Hamas and from the Iranian regime on the intention to destroy Israel (including a digital countdown clock in Tehran), accompanied by extensive military preparations and attacks by the Hezbollah proxy forces, are de facto examples of genocidal objectives. Therefore, in addressing the appropriateness of the “genocide” and “apartheid” labels, the Oxford Union has a number of dimensions and cases to consider and compare.

Lastly, in addressing the leaders and members of the Oxford Union, I express the deep concern that many of us have regarding the attacks against Jewish students and faculty at Oxford University, and ask what you are doing to effectively counter this ugly display of abusive power.

In accordance with “the tradition of confronting the boldest questions of our time,” the Oxford Union would be well advised to address this question: This house recognises that its own history of Jew-hatred in different forms is fundamentally immoral and offers its apologies.

I look forward to your considered response,
Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg
RNC Spotlights Campus Antisemitism as Elise Stefanik Teases ‘Bombshell’ Findings From US Congressional Probe
US lawmakers are preparing to release later this year a trove of new “bombshell” information revealing the extent to which antisemitism has been allowed to flourish on university campuses across the country, according to a high-ranking Republican.

US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke with political pundit and podcast host Megyn Kelly about the efforts of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to investigate surging antisemitism, including anti-Jewish bias, on college campuses. While reminiscing over last December’s congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — in which each campus leader proclaimed that calls for a genocide of Jews may not violate school rules depending on “the context” — Stefanik revealed that the committee has obtained new documents shedding light on anti-Jewish hate at elite universities.

“This is pervasive in higher-ed. We have worked on this investigation, and if you think the hearing was bad, Megyn, we’re going to have to talk about all the documents that have been turned over because of our subpoena,” Stefanik said. “We’ll put out a report later this year. That’s even more bombshell material in there. It’s a disgrace what’s happening at these universities.”

Antisemitism has exploded at universities since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Over the past several months, the committee has rigorously investigated antisemitism at America’s most prestigious universities. The panel recently unearthed and exposed text message exchanges between Columbia University deans which revealed the campus leaders mocking Jewish students as “privileged.” The lawmakers also alleged, based on their investigation, that Harvard University has engaged in a “pattern of inaction” in response to campus antisemitism.

Stefanik spoke to Kelly at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Republicans are gathering this week to nominate their 2024 presidential candidate. The issue of campus antisemitism has been a key issue highlighted at the RNC.
Police probe campus terror event caught on audio tape
Firebrand speakers at a socialist conference hosted by University College London (UCL) brazenly supported Hamas and Hezbollah and glorified attacks on Israel in an apparent breach of the Terrorism Act, the JC can reveal.

University authorities asked police to investigate after this newspaper sent them a recording of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) event, which featured a keynote speaker saying he backed Hezbollah “unconditionally” and cheered whenever it destroyed an Israeli tank.

The audience could be heard enthusiastically applauding these remarks.

Another speaker was recorded describing the October 7 massacre by Hamas as a “jailbreak”, while a third said: “We stand behind the Palestinian resistance… formations like Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are all proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act 2000, which means it is an offence punishable by fines or imprisonment of up to 14 years to “invite support” or encouragement for them.

It is also an offence to “arrange, manage or assist in arranging a meeting in the knowledge that the meeting is to support… the activities of a proscribed organisation”.

The Community Security Trust (CST) welcomed the involvement of police, denouncing the conference as “toxic” and “hateful”.

SWP claimed that more than 3,000 people attended the annual conference, which has been running for 40 years and takes place over four days.

Other speakers included independent MP Jeremy Corbyn, the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, film director Ken Loach, former MP Claudia Webbe and the Stop the War coalition leader Lindsey German. There is no suggestion that they voiced support for proscribed terrorist groups or attended any of the sessions where those views were expressed.
Northwestern police arrest 4 educators, months after pro-Palestinian encampment
Northwestern University police arrested and charged four educators for allegedly obstructing law enforcement at the Palestinian solidarity encampment on the Evanston campus in late April.

The misdemeanor charges come months after the encampment was dismantled through an agreement between protesters and university leaders.

“It’s a pretty mind-blowing experience to have your employer send their own police after you to arrest you within your place of employment,” said Alithia Zamantakis, an assistant professor at Northwestern’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing — and one of the faculty members facing charges.

University spokesperson Jon Yates defended the arrests.

“While the University permits peaceful demonstrations, it does not permit activity that disrupts University operations, violates the law, or includes the intimidation or harassment of members of the community,” Yates said in an email.

Yates said the university would not discuss individual cases. The charges have been filed with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. A representative from that office said the office could not comment on pending litigation.

Members of the campus chapter of Educators for Justice in Palestine said the four individuals arrested and released by campus police earlier this month include two professors, a graduate worker and a librarian.
Time for Change at UC Santa Barbara
The end of the academic year at UC Santa Barbara offers an opportunity to assess the university’s handling of surging anti-Semitism on campus. The facts are ugly. Pro-Palestinian protesters verbally assaulted the Jewish student body president, illegally occupied the MultiCultural Center, illegally occupied Girvetz Hall, set up an illegal outdoor encampment, and violated the civil rights of Jewish students in myriad other ways.

A small number of UCSB faculty also intimidated Jewish students. One egregious example was the shocking anti-Israel statement issued by the Department of Feminist Studies following the Hamas massacres, rapes, and sexual violence last October 7.

The UCSB administration tolerated these outrages, either doing nothing or waiting far too long before taking only feeble action.

UCSB’s administrators, like their colleagues at countless other universities around the country, hid behind the façade that the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protesters were simply exercising their free speech rights and not threatening Jewish students or promoting antisemitism.

Let’s be clear: Factually accurate criticism of Israel’s government and its policies is perfectly legitimate. But those who spew falsehoods about Israel (“deliberately starving Gazan children,” “committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” etc.) are engaging in the same form of anti-Semitic blood libel as the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Moreover, calls for Israel’s destruction, including calls to “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” fall outside the realm of legitimate and factually accurate criticism of Israeli policy. Instead, such calls are a form of anti-Zionism, meaning the denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancient homeland, a right that the Council of the League of Nations unanimously recognized and legitimized on July 24, 1922, in the Mandate for Palestine, and that the United Nations General Assembly reaffirmed in Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947.

Anti-Zionism is therefore a manifestation of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish hate. It doesn’t matter that the UCSB protestors who espouse anti-Zionism claim it isn’t the same as anti-Semitism. What matters is how Jewish audiences perceive “River to the Sea” rhetoric and other calls for Israel’s destruction. Most Jewish students on the UCSB campus felt threatened by calls for Israel’s destruction. They perceived such calls as macro-aggressive and blatant forms of anti-Semitism.

Despite the increasing prevalence of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism on campus, the UCSB administration regards Jewish students and faculty as falling outside the protective umbrella of the university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies. The DEI mantra seems to be that Jews are “white” and therefore “oppressors.” Jews, however, are a distinct and constitutionally protected minority group. Jews are also multiethnic and multiracial. More than half of Israel’s Jewish population are non-European and non-white. American Jews (including the UCSB Jewish community) live under increasingly uncomfortable conditions of unequal treatment and threats to our safety.

The UCSB administration therefore should treat Jewish students and faculty the same way they treat black students and faculty (and other protected groups). This is not only the right thing to do, but also the administration’s legal responsibility as public university under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.


Media’s Casualty is the Truth as it Spreads Three Damaging Lies About Gaza
“The first casualty of war is the truth.” The late Republican senator Hiram Johnson’s immortal observation has come to mind more than a few times with regard to the media’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

Actually, a more accurate rendering of the statement during this war would be, “most of the casualties of war are the truth.”

For the truth was not the first victim when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on that morning on October 7; raping and kidnapping festival-goers as the sun rose in the sky and burning families alive in their homes within the formerly tranquil kibbutzim near the Gaza border.

In fact, the gruesome truth was there for everyone to bear horrified witness to as Hamas terrorists proudly documented their wicked actions using cell phones and body-worn cameras.

But truth has since taken a back seat in the reporting of Israel’s response to the attack, with several glaring lies still being peddled by the media, twisting the public’s understanding of the war. The media appears determined to paint Israel as a pariah state, eagerly spreading the most damaging misinformation and stubbornly refusing to correct themselves even when confronted with undeniable evidence to the contrary.

The ‘Genocide’ Ruling That Wasn’t
Perhaps the most damaging of all the mistruths still being promoted by the press is the International Court of Justice’s interim ruling in January on a case brought by South Africa that accused Israel of genocide.

As we pointed out at the time, organizations such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch led the way in misinterpreting the ruling, falsely claiming that the court had decided that the allegation of genocide in Gaza by Israel was “plausible.”

Next to jump on the misinformation bandwagon was the international media, uncritically parroting the claims of politically-motivated human rights organizations instead of consulting legal experts to report the ruling accurately.

Months later, Joan Donoghue, head of the ICJ at the time, set the record straight.

Appearing on the BBC current affairs show HARDTalk in April, Donoghue expressed relief at the opportunity to explain the ruling’s effect and, in doing so, exposed months of media negligence, including by the editorial team of the very program on which she was being interviewed.

“The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court,” she clarified. “It then looked at the facts as well. But it did not decide – and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media – it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

Despite Donoghue’s clear and public clarification, the “plausible genocide” lie continues to be promoted by numerous media outlets — demonstrating ignorance at best and naked bias by journalists at worst.
Global National Broadcast Tells Viewers Israel Struck A “Humanitarian” Zone In Gaza, Failing To Ask What Hamas’ Leaders Were Doing There In The First Place
On July 13, Global National ran a video report entitled: “Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas military chief kills at least 90,” covering an Israeli air strike which targeted Mohammed Deif, the elusive senior Hamas leader who played a pivotal role in the October 7 attacks, and many other terrorist attacks against Israel, dating as far back as the 1990s.

The strike also targeted and successfully eliminated Khan Yunis brigade leader, Rafa Salama and apparently hit a warehouse in Al-Mawasi, a rural area in Gaza’s coastal region, which was ostensibly being used by several aid organisations. Making sure to point out that Al-Mawasi was a designated ‘humanitarian zone’, reporter Neetu Garcha did not question what the leader of Hamas’ “military wing” was doing in a humanitarian zone to begin with, or why terrorist commanders like Salama are being housed amongst aid workers and civilians – two questions to which any honest journalist should want answers.

The report cited the “Hamas run Health Ministry” figure that at least 90 people were killed and 300 injured. Despite acknowledging that this number comes from Hamas (the same group who can’t determine how many hostages remain in Gaza, where they are, or if they’re alive), the figures were never questioned. Despite using words like ‘claims’ and ‘alleged’ when dealing with anything provided by Israel, Global National took the word of a terrorist organisation at face value.

From there, the report transitioned to scenes of Gazans running back and forth with supposed casualties in their arms, and then to an interview with a man who seems to be represented as a physician at Nasser Hospital in Gaza. This man, identified only by his name, Muhammed Saqr, and no title, claimed that the hospital is unable to deal with any further patients, as their beds are full. This is despite the footage from not 30 seconds before showing a large hospital room with several empty beds, and few people waiting for treatment.


Hamas supporters protest AOC, Bernie for not being pro-Hamas enough
One of the ways to tell apart moderates and extremists is checking the brakes. The other is the constant infighting. And the two are connected. Extremists have no brakes so their movement is always going to new extremes. Tomorrow’s radicals cannibalize yesterday’s.

In my book “Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left,” I quote a telling line about the French Revolution.

“‘As the revolution becomes radical, the Right disappears, and the Left of one assembly becomes the Right of the succeeding assembly,’ Mignet explained, describing how each new political incarnation became more radical than the last. ‘The Left of the national assembly became the Right of the legislative assembly,’ he wrote, and then ‘the Left of the legislative assembly became the Right of the convention.’

“Finally, he concluded, ‘the Left of the convention were those red terrorists known as the Mountain party.’ These ‘red terrorists,’ including Robespierre, were the worst of the Jacobins and would cover France in blood as they purged not only conservatives, but fellow leftists.”

On that note, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders recently showed up at a rally to save Rep. Jamaal Bowman. This is a big deal because saving Bowman has become a litmus test for the left’s electoral strength and that of the anti-Israel crowd in Congress. If they can save Bowman, they will claim that the Squad’s power is growing and AIPAC has been beaten. So the left has a lot invested in it. Or so you would think. But when you have no brakes, this happens:

“Pro-Hamas protestors disrupted a joint rally between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) on Saturday,” The Hill reported.

“The protest was organized by Within Our Lives, a self-described Palestinian-led, New York pro-terrorist organization.

“‘Endorsing Biden is endorsing the ongoing genocide in Gaza,’ Within Our Lifetime wrote in a thread on X promoting the demonstration at the rally.”
Media Continues to Fan the Flames of Progressive ‘Squad’ Antisemitism
Is it acceptable for a progressive Democrat to say and do antisemitic things and then deny they are antisemitic during their election campaigns by latching onto fringe groups like If Not Now and Jewish Voices for Peace?

This seems to be the case with Representative Cori Bush (D-MO).

The mainstream media is once again beginning to shift the focus from domestic issues to Israel and the Jewish community for the upcoming August St. Louis Democratic primary race between Bush and St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.

The race follows in the footsteps of last month’s New York Democratic primary between Jamaal Bowman and George Latimer, in which the media placed a heavy focus on Israel and “big money,” when voters were mostly concerned with domestic issues. The Jewish community felt unsafe and disturbed by Bowman’s apparent antisemitism. In the end, he lost the race, and was unseated by Latimer.

However this lesson has apparently not been learned by both Bush and the media. Most American voters prioritize on domestic issues at the ballot box.

As a matter of fact, Emerson College Polling, The Hill, and Nexstar Missouri conducted a poll which revealed that Missouri voters prioritize the economy (34.3%), abortion access (12.3%) and immigration (10.3%) as top three issues. Israel-Hamas did not even fall within the nine categories recorded in the poll.


Singapore’s defense minister says Gaza war has ‘radicalized another generation of would-be terrorists’
Ng Eng Hen, the defense minister of Singapore, warned on Tuesday that the war in Gaza has created a new crop of potential terrorists.

“It’s been difficult for countries, whether they have Muslim populations or not,” Ng said, speaking during the opening session of the Aspen Security Forum. “I think the problem is that you’ve radicalized another generation of would-be terrorists in Gaza and elsewhere.”

He noted that Singapore’s population is 15% Muslim, and the country recently arrested two individuals, including a 14-year-old boy, who had been radicalized and were planning to commit an act of terrorism. He described the reaction to the conflict in his country as “anger.”

Ng also said that he thinks that, across many countries, including Singapore, the war has done damage to the U.S. and other governments’ reputations among younger generations.

“We’ve lost the young on this,” he said. “The young are, even in Singapore, particularly incensed about the violence and the fact that nothing is done to stop it.”

Ng said that the “retaliation, the retribution by the IDF” for Oct. 7 “is painful for all of us, but the greater problem there is that it can expand beyond Gaza and Israel.”


Biden not deterred by Knesset resolution rejecting Palestinian statehood, White House says
The Biden administration is not deterred by the resolution passed yesterday by the Knesset rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“I think the best way I can respond to that is to just reiterate our firm belief in the power and the promise of a two-state solution,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby tells reporters.

“That is not something that President Biden is going to give up on, and we’re going to keep doing everything we can to try to achieve that outcome,” he continues.

“We know it is not going to happen tomorrow, and we know it’s not going to be without difficulty, and we also know that it requires courage and leadership in the region to bring it about,” Kirby adds.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel dodges repeated efforts to respond specifically to the legislation.

However, he says, “It can be safely implied that a piece of legislation that is in opposition to a two-state solution is not something that we would be thrilled about.”
Up to 60,000 Israeli businesses may close in 2024 as war takes toll on economy
Israeli business will be contending with the fallout of the months-long war with the Hamas terror group through at least the end of the year, which is expected to see as many as 60,000 businesses shut down in 2024, according to business information company CofaceBDI.

The bleak prediction comes as in the nine months since the outbreak of the war with Hamas following the brutal October 7 onslaught by the terror group, a total of 46,000 businesses had to already close as they struggled to stay afloat, with many hurt by a high interest rate environment, more expensive financing costs, a shortage of manpower, a sharp decline in turnover and operations, logistic and supply disruptions, and insufficient government assistance.

In comparison, a record 76,000 enterprises were forced to close during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, while in a regular, routine year, about 40,000 businesses a year are shutting down.

“There is effectively no sector in the economy, which is immune to the repercussions of the ongoing war,” CofaceBDI CEO Yoel Amir told The Times of Israel. “Businesses are coping with a very complex reality: fear about an escalation of the war coupled with uncertainty about when the fighting will end alongside continued challenges such as staff shortage, low demand, growing financing needs, an increase in procurement costs and logistical issues, and most recently the export ban by Turkey are all making it increasingly difficult for Israeli businesses to survive this period.”

About 77 percent of the businesses that were forced to close since the beginning of the war, which make up about 35,000 enterprises, are small businesses with up to five employees and they are the most vulnerable in the economy as they have more immediate financing needs when their operations are hard hit, and they are also the ones finding it harder to raise critical funds, according to Amir.
Nine arrested in West Bank large-scale IDF overnight operation
IDF, Shin Bet, and Border Police officers arrested nine wanted individuals during a large-scale overnight operation in villages near Highway 90 across the West Bank, the IDF announced on Thursday.

During the operation, IDF and Border Police forces interrogated dozens of suspects and gathered information in villages near Highway 90.

In the Etzion Brigade, forces discovered two pistols, arrested two wanted individuals and confiscated terror funds.

In Bani Na'im and Beit Kahil, fighters arrested two wanted individuals and found and confiscated two pistols. In Beit Liqya in the Ephraim Brigade and the village of Tell in the Samaria Brigade, four wanted individuals were arrested, two of whom were involved in inciting terrorism. Another wanted individual was arrested in Nablus.

Weapons and wanted people arrested during the operation
"The arrested individuals and the confiscated weapons were transferred to the security forces for further processing. There were no casualties among our forces," the IDF said.

Since the beginning of the war, approximately 4,400 wanted individuals have been arrested throughout the West Bank and the Jordan Valley Division, with about 1,850 of them affiliated with the Hamas terror organization.
IDF: Two off-duty soldiers, two civilians wounded in blast near West Bank settlement Hermesh
Two off-duty IDF soldiers and two civilians were wounded in a blast near the northern West Bank settlement of Hermesh earlier today, the military says.

The victims are listed in light and moderate condition.

According to an initial IDF probe, the explosive was detonated as one of the Israelis got out of a car and attempted to open a gate on a road in the area of the settlement.

The IDF says it is searching for the assailants who planted the bomb.
Three Israelis wounded in Samaria IED attack
Four Israelis were wounded on Thursday afternoon when Palestinian terrorists targeted their vehicle with an explosive near the Jewish community of Hermesh in northwestern Samaria.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that “two IDF soldiers on leave were moderately and lightly wounded as a result of an IED charge near Hermesh in the Menashe Division; two civilians were lightly injured.”

The Hatzalah Judea and Samaria rescue organization announced that “terrorists detonated an explosive device on a civilian vehicle east of Hermesh in northern Samaria.”

The lightly wounded victims continued to drive towards an IDF post in the area and were evacuated from there to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera by military ambulance, the rescue group said.

Israel’s Army Radio cited medical authorities as saying that the civilian victims included an 18-month-old baby.

On Tuesday, three Israelis were lightly wounded in a shooting near Shavei Shomron and Nablus, some six miles south-southeast of Hermesh. The Hamas terrorist group took responsibility for the attack.

“This is the second attack in two days in the Menashe sector,” Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan said. “We demand that the Israeli government and the [IDF] senior commanders treat them as deadly attacks and act accordingly.”
Twelve years ago today: Hezbollah’s deadly bus bombing in Bulgaria
Today, July 18, marks twelve years since the Burgas bus bombing, a terrorist attack at Sarafovo Airport in Bulgaria that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian while injuring 32 more Israelis.

The attack, a targeted suicide bombing attack on a bus carrying 42 Israelis, was believed to have been carried out by Hezbollah terrorists.

On July 18, 2012, at 5:23 pm, 23-year-old Franco-Lebanese national Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini detonated an explosive device on a passenger bus transporting Israeli tourists from the airport to their hotels in the seaside resort town of Burgas.

The explosion, identified in 2020 to have been an ammonium nitrate-based explosive, resulted in the deaths of five Israelis, including a pregnant woman as well as the Bulgarian bus driver. El-Husseini, who had entered Bulgaria using the alias Jacques Felipe Martin, also died in the blast.

The attack’s victims were Yitzhak Kolangi, 28, of Petah Tikva; Maor Harush, 26, of Acre, Amir Menashe, 27, of Petah Tikva, Elior Preis, 26, of Acre, and Kochava Shriki, 44, of Rishon Lezion, who was also pregnant. The bus driver was Mustafa Kyosov, 36, a Muslim from the village of Yurukovo in southwestern Bulgaria.

A year after the attack, Bulgarian authorities, supported by forensic evidence and intelligence from Europol, stated that Hezbollah operatives were behind the attack—the deadliest against Israelis abroad since 2004. This led to international condemnation and the European Union’s decision to list Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization in 2013. Both Hezbollah and Iran deny any involvement in the attack.
PFLP-affiliated NGO leader 'extremist hate preacher' may be kicked out of Belgium
A leader in an NGO affiliated with a Palestinian terrorist group may have his refuge status in Belgium revoked over his extremist activism, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network said in a statement on Tuesday.

Samidoun Europe coordinator Mohammed Khatib was called to a hearing before a Belgian asylum office for his connection to the Samidoun, the Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, and radical statements made at pro-Palestinian rallies.

“We note that this is not only an attempt to target Mohammed as an individual and Samidoun as an organization,” Samidoun said. “It aims specifically to silence the movement to liberate Palestinian prisoners and to uphold the legitimacy and justice of the Palestinian resistance, especially the armed resistance, as part of the international, Arab, and Palestinian global intifada.”

Khatib has in the past been described by Palestinian outlets Quds News Network, the Palestinian Information Center (PIC), and Quds Press as a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) operative and spokesperson. The European Union lists PFLP as a designated terrorist organization.

The Samidoun decried that part of Belgian Immigration Minister Nicole de Moor’s intention to strip Khatib of his refugee status was based on Israel’s 2021 designation of the Samidoun as a PFLP subsidiary. Indeed, the Samidoun said that Israel’s designation should not have legal status in Belgium. The Palestinian NGO regularly advocates on behalf of PFLP terrorists and shares messages from the terrorist group.
As Hamas’s Power Collapses, Old Feuds Are Resurfac
In May, Mahmoud Nashabat, a high-ranking military figure in the Fatah party (which controls the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority), was gunned down in central Gaza. Nashabat was an officer in the Gaza wing of the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a terrorist outfit that served as Fatah’s vanguard during the second intifada, and now sometimes collaborates with Hamas. But his killers were Hamas members, and he was one of at least 35 Palestinians murdered in Gaza in the past two months as various terrorist and criminal groups go about settling old scores, some of which date back to the 1980s. Einav Halabi writes:
Security sources familiar with the situation told the London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that Gaza is now also beleaguered by the resurgence of old conflicts. “Many people have been killed in incidents related to the first intifada in 1987, while others have died in family disputes,” they said.

The “first-intifada portfolio” in Gaza is considered complex and convoluted, as it is filled with hatred among residents who accuse others of killing relatives for various reasons, including collaboration with Israel. . . . According to reports from Gaza, there are vigorous efforts on the ground to contain these developments, but the chances of success remain unclear. Hamas, for its part, is trying to project governance and control, recently releasing several videos showcasing how its operatives brutally beat residents accused of looting.

These incidents, gruesome as they are, suggest that Hamas’s control over the territory is slipping, and it no longer holds a monopoly on violence or commands the fear necessary to keep the population in line. The murders and beatings also dimension the grim reality that would ensue if the war ends precipitously: a re-empowered Hamas setting about getting vengeance on its enemies and reimposing its reign of terror.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Uncoordinated Assassination Squads Gave Arafat’s Polonium Poisoning AIDS (satire)
An investigation into past operations by Israel against high-profile enemy leaders found this week that two teams, each operating without knowledge of the other, wound up neutralizing each other’s efforts to kill Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, with the first group successfully irradiating the man with a deadly radioactive isotope, but failing to cause his death as expected because a second team them successfully injected him with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which, instead of ravaging his body, attacked the radioactive material and canceled out its effects.

The official probe resulted in a report that expressed 90% certainty of the scenario: Team One managed to plant Polonium 210 in Yasser Arafat’s limousine, causing him to suffer enough exposure to guarantee long-term deterioration of his bodily systems. However, the hoped-for radiation sickness never materialized, because Team Two, unaware that Team One had any such operation afoot, soon afterwards hit Arafat with a dissolving dart that infected him with the AIDS pathogen – or so they thought, because in fact the virus invaded the Polonium and stopped its effects. Yasser Arafat died in a French hospital of an unknown infection in 2004, at the age of 75.

In the years since, the conspiracy-theory-prone anti-Israel rabble have made numerous accusations that Israel had killed Arafat, because as everyone knows, if not for Jews, everyone would live forever and no one would suffer the infirmities of old age. Others less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause have suggested Arafat had AIDS, with heavy implications and innuendos that the man engaged in homosexual activity – a severe taboo in Islamic societies.

A declassified report from 2014, released in redacted form this week, showed that Mossad investigators are virtually certain that both rumors are true, even if the official reports and investigations by medical teams after Arafat’s death made no mention of AIDS, and an earlier set of tests that found abnormal levels of Polonium in his remains was later refuted.


Seth Frantzman: Iran on diplomatic offensive against Israel in NY, MidEast
Iran underlined how important attacks from Lebanon on Israel are, as they are “supporting the resistance in Palestine.”

Kani also said his country was trying to “prevent the expansion of the war in the region,” which is strange considering that Iran has pushed Hezbollah in Lebanon to continue its attacks on Israel.

Habib, in turn, praised “Iran’s support for the stability and security of Lebanon” and said, “We are looking for peace and stability in the region. In addition to ending the war against Gaza, efforts should be made to eliminate the risk of expanding the scope of the war in the region.”

Kani also called on the UN Security Council to take measures to force Israel to “immediately and unconditionally” end its attacks in Gaza at a Wednesday meeting chaired by Russia.

Moscow, Beijing, Ankara, and Tehran have all backed Hamas after the October 7 attacks. “I would like to thank the Russian Federation for organizing this timely open debate. The Israeli regime has destroyed over 80% of residential areas and all infrastructure, including hospitals, mosques, churches, educational centers, and historical sites in Gaza,” Kani said.

In an interview with CNN, he “reiterated his country’s pledge to use domestic and international legal and judicial frameworks and mechanisms to execute justice on the perpetrators of Lt.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani,” according to the IRNA.

On CNN, Kani said, “Everyone knows the conflict in Southern Lebanon is rooted in the Zionist crimes in Gaza.“Over the past nine months, due to the continuation of crimes and genocide, regional resistance fronts have become active against the Zionists. Therefore, whenever the Zionist crime in Gaza ends, it is obvious that it can be expected that the resistance will not take action in other areas.”

This is the usual reiteration regarding Hezbollah’s nine months of attacks, part of Iran’s plan to instigate a multifront war in the region against Israel.
If Iran Goes Nuclear, the U.S. Will Be Forced Out of the Middle East
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in May that Iran has, or is close to having, enough highly enriched uranium to build multiple atomic bombs, while, according to other sources, it is taking steps toward acquiring the technology to assemble such weapons. Considering the effects on Israel, the Middle East, and American foreign policy of a nuclear-armed Iran, Eli Diamond writes: The basic picture is that the Middle East would become inhospitable to the U.S. and its allies when Iran goes nuclear. Israel would find itself isolated, with fewer options for deterring Iran or confronting its proxies. The Saudis and Emiratis would be forced into uncomfortable compromises.

Any course reversal has to start by recognizing that the United States has entered the early stages of a global conflict in which the Middle East is set to be a main attraction, not a sideshow.

Directly or not, the U.S. is engaged in this conflict and has a significant stake in its outcome. In Europe, American and Western arms are the only things standing between Ukraine and its defeat at the hands of Russia. In the Middle East, American arms remain indispensable to Israel’s survival as it wages a defensive, multifront war against Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hizballah. In the Indo-Pacific, China has embarked on the greatest military buildup since World War II, its eyes set on Taiwan but ultimately U.S. primacy.

While Iran is the smallest of these three powers, China and Russia rely on it greatly for oil and weapons, respectively. Both rely on it as a tool to degrade America’s position in the region. Constraining Iran and preventing its nuclear breakout would keep waterways open for Western shipping and undermine a key node in the supply chain for China and Russia.

Diamond offers a series of concrete suggestions for how the U.S. could push back hard against Iran, among them expanding the Abraham Accords into a military and diplomatic alliance that would include Saudi Arabia. But such a plan depends on Washington recognizing that its interests in Eastern Europe, in the Pacific, and in the Middle East are all connected.
Thirty-six states adopt Jew-hatred guidelines amid global resurgence
Thirty-six countries and international bodies led by the United States endorsed the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism in Argentina on Wednesday.

The special envoys and other representatives adopted the 12 nonbinding guidelines at a time when the world is seeing a spike in antisemitism, in part triggered by events in the Middle East.

Buenos Aires hosted the global gathering on Thursday as they attended a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Jewish community center in the Argentine capital.

Eighty-five people were killed in the attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (Spanish initials: AMIA) and more than 300 were wounded. The terrorist attack was ordered by the Islamic Republic of Iran and carried out by its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.

JNS caught up with Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a former member of Knesset who is Jerusalem’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, just before she entered the ceremony.

She praised the inclusion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism in the document.

“This was an especially important declaration on behalf of all the states and certainly Israel as a signatory,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism is the benchmark by which we can identify and combat all strains of what is an ever-mutating, shape-shifting hatred that kills.”
99 years since publication of Mein Kampf, 'struggle' against antisemitism continues
99 years ago today, on 18 July 1925, Mein Kampf, the infamous book by Adolf Hitler was published in Germany.

The tome, which translates as "My Struggle" in English, was written by Hitler while he was in prison for the failed coup against the state, otherwise known as the Munich Putsch in 1923.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler detailed his ideology, aligned with the extreme right, and discusses the reasons for his antisemitism and anti-communism.

He also spoke of his desire to expand German terrorist into parts of Eastern Europe (to increase lebensraum, 'living room' for the German people) as he felt there was "insufficient territory to support the population", and he wrote if his aim to evict Jews from Germany, as he believed they threatened the German people. He wrote of Jews acting as "the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls" and said that a Jew can never be a German.

The book was banned in Germany until 2015, when it was legally allowed to be reprinted for the first time. A special annotated edition written by scholars sold 85,000 German-language copies in 2017, according to the BBC. According to the New York Times, no full edition of Mein Kampf has ever been translated into Hebrew.

Several copies of Mein Kampf, including ones translated into Arabic, have been found in Gaza since the beginning of the October 7 war, including most recently in the Nuseirat camp.

Inside one copy were margin notes, highlighted sections, and annotated Post-it notes.
'Nashville has a Nazi problem': Jews face two weeks of neo-Nazi invasion
Neo-Nazis have terrorized Jewish Nashville residents over the last two weeks with a series of marches, physical assaults, and antisemitic pamphlets, according to Jewish groups, law enforcement, and local politicians, adding to the list of incidents over the year conducted by multiple extremist groups coming from outside the city.

On Wednesday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville warned on Facebook that security contacts had informed them that one neo-Nazi group would continue to operate in the Nashville area for several days. Nashville Metropolitan Police Department Chief John Drake said in a Wednesday statement that the group was likely operating out of a short-term rental in Scottsville, Kentucky. Nashville Jewish Federation CEO Rabbi Dan Horowitz said in a Nashville City Council meeting on Tuesday that several groups had been visiting Nashville over the past year and that two separate groups were responsible for actions over the last two weeks.

Drake said officers have been present at neo-Nazi demonstrations to deter confrontations. He advised residents not to interact with protesters, who were filming for propaganda.

“Even Nazi speech is protected under the United States Constitution,” said Drake, adding that the police would act swiftly when there were violations of the law.

“Nashville has a Nazi problem,” said former Nashville mayor and Democratic Tennessee congressional candidate Megan Barry, arguing that extremists crossed the line from speech to harassment and intimidation, which calls for legal consequences. She said the groups came to Nashville because they believed they had a receptive audience in the city. “We need to make it clear they are badly mistaken.”


Tiny 3,800-year old textile found in Israel was dyed with biblical ‘scarlet worm’
Israeli researchers have confirmed that a 3,800-year-old scarlet-red textile found in the Judean Desert in 2016 was dyed using a tiny insect referred to throughout ancient sources, according to an article published this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The peer-reviewed study was a joint effort of Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University and the Israel Antiquities Authority, researchers said in a press release.

Archaeologists discovered the piece of textile, less than 2 centimeters (about a half-inch) across, in the so-called “Cave of Skulls” in the Tze’elim Stream near Masada, during a joint excavation to save heritage finds from antiquities theft in 2016.

Researchers were struck by the textile’s dark-red color.

Scientists carbon-dated the artifact to the Middle Bronze Age (20th-18th centuries BCE), and employed high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) — a technique used to identify the ingredients of mixed solutions— to trace the origin of the dye to a scale insect called Kermes vermilio.

The crimson bug, found throughout the Mediterranean region but not in Israel itself, is probably the same “scarlet worm” (tola’at hashani) mentioned 25 times in the Bible, often next to mentions of blue (techelet) and purple (argaman), considered the most precious and prestigious colors in the ancient world.

In the Bible, the Israelites are commanded to use the “scarlet worm” to dye the fabrics of the Tabernacle and the priestly garments.

“In ancient times, the dye was produced from the female scale insect, which lives on the kermes oak tree (Quercus coccifera),” Na’ama Sukenik of the Israel Antiquities Authority explained in a press release.

“Collecting these kermes was done in a very short window of time — one month of the year, in the summer, after the female had laid her eggs but before they hatched — when the amount of dye was greatest,” Sukenik said.




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

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