Thursday, July 25, 2024

07/25 Links Pt2: What Kamala Harris Should Do About the Pro-Hamas Mobs; Wikipedia’s Jewish Problem; The German Left’s Jewish Dilemma

From Ian:

Richard Landes: Islamic and Arab Imperialism and Irredentism is driving the conflict between the river and the sea
This analysis might seem depressing. After all, the urge of Westerners to dismiss/ignore this evidence and insist so strongly on the secular, nationalist, human rights dimension of this conflict, reflects at best an unconscious need to believe there is a ‘solution’. At worst it is a dogmatic denial of reality. When Benny Morris completed his study 1948, the publisher rejected it because it depicted the Muslim war on Israel as a Jihad.[4] Our political ‘scientists’ have limited experience understanding dealing with religious movements and motivations, so rather than address the lacuna in their knowledge, they prefer to go with the fiction of Palestinian ‘nationalism’ created by Soviet propaganda. That was the logic of the Two-State Solution: land for peace. However, when your opponent plays by zero-sum logic, concessions are invitations to further aggression, Land for War. And some key figures, including members of the Israeli intelligence community, continue to believe the fiction, no matter how threadbare.[5]

What we need to explore as a culture is the mystery of how a believer can renounce triumphalism in the present (what he imagines at the eschaton only matter when she thinks the time has come), and adopt a demotic religiosity. That is a far less ‘manly’ form of religious identity, but it benefits everyone, not just the dominators. If the Western ‘progressives’ were serious about their values they would not encourage this Palestinian irredentism by pretending it is the ‘freedom fighting’ of the underdog, rather than the rage of the frustrated imperialist, especially when that imperialism targets the progressives as well.

It is not as if Islam has no demotic tradition. (One might argue it characterised the first Meccan period.) It is a form of humanitarian racism to believe that Muslims are incapable of the kind of reciprocal respect that democracies demand for the sake of separating church and state, a reciprocity that demotic religiosity makes possible. It is a form of folly not to confront the Muslim world and demand it get over its triumphalist honor-fixation and join the rest of humanity, to somehow believe that demanding this is a form of Western (progressive) imperialism.

The Jihadis have made it clear what this war is about: ‘We love death more than you love life, and that is why we will defeat you.’ Their conclusion only holds true if you who think yourselves bystanders, side with the death cult. We will win when you – infidel and believer – join us in loving life. Who would have thought that loving life was so difficult?
David Singer: Occupied Palestinian territory is reoccupied Jewish territory
The UN General Assembly should take no comfort from the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in “Legal Consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (“Territory”) which has failed to recognise the rights vested in the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in this Territory under articles 6 and 25 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

The ICJ has ridden roughshod over these vested Jewish rights in Paragraph 51 of the Advisory Opinion:

“Having been part of the Ottoman Empire, at the end of the First World War, Palestine was placed under a class “A” Mandate that was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to Article 22, paragraph 4, of the League Covenant....

... The territorial boundaries of Mandatory Palestine were laid down by various instruments, in particular on the eastern border, by a British memorandum of 16 September 1922 and the Anglo-Transjordanian Treaty of 20 February 1928.”

Firstly: No mention by the ICJ that the primary purpose of the Mandate as expressed in its preamble and its articles was to promote the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in what the ICJ is now misleadingly calling “Occupied Palestinian Territory”

Secondly: the Mandate for Palestine was not a class “A” Mandate as the 1937 Palestine Royal Commission Report explained:

“The Mandate is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience “A” Mandates, accorded with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. Thus the Syrian Mandate provided that the government should be based on an organic law which should take into account the rights, interests and wishes of all the inhabitants, and that measures should be enacted “to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent States “. The corresponding sentences of the draft Mandate for Iraq were the same. In compliance with them National Legislatures were established in due course on an elective basis. Article I of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests ” full powers of legislation and of administration”, within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory.”

Thirdly: Not one reference by the ICJ to article 6 of the Mandate which stated:

“The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”

Fourthly: The territorial boundaries of Palestine remained unchanged until 1946 when Transjordan (78% of the territory of Palestine located east of the Jordan River) was granted independence by Great Britain.

The ICJ has displayed a blatant anti-Jewish bias in its consideration of the Mandate.
Daniel Pipes: A Muslim Aliyah Paralleled the Jewish Aliyah Part I, to 1948
"So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country
[Palestine] and multiplied till their population has increased."
— Winston Churchill in 1938

"[T]he Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded
the total Jewish immigration during this whole period."
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939

Famously, Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, called aliyah, is centuries old and took on an organized form in 1882. Described as "the central goal of the State of Israel" (in the words of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon), it provides the demographic basis on which the entire Zionist enterprise rests. Both very public and highly controversial, it has inspired millions of Jews to move to territories now under Israeli control.

Much less famously, a large and diverse non-Jewish immigration to Palestine (meaning here, roughly Gaza, the West Bank, and the northern half of the State of Israel), mostly Muslim, has also taken place. These immigrants included Arabs, Muslims, and many others. They and their descendants probably make up a majority of the population now called Palestinian. Palestinians, in other words, are not an aboriginal, autochthonous, first, indigenous, or native people; most of them are as recently arrived as Zionists. They are also as ethnically diverse.

The scale of this non-Jewish immigration was once well known, as the Churchill and Roosevelt quotes above indicate. It has, however, long since disappeared from view, replaced by a fable about a homogeneous people living on the land since the deepest antiquity.

This article seeks to restore the historical record by reviewing non-Jewish immigration to Palestine during the century from the 1840s until the creation of Israel in 1948; then it examines the fairytale that displaced that record. A future article will take up non-Jewish immigration since 1948 to the State of Israel.


Seth Mandel: What Kamala Harris Should Do About the Pro-Hamas Mobs
What American voters want to see from their incumbent leaders isn’t too much of a mystery: acknowledge the problems taking place on their watch, and offer some vision for solving them. President Biden’s numbers were so low in part because he rarely did either, and never did both.

His administration would hear complaints about the economic duress caused by inflation, for example, and respond by pretending the voters were wrong—that they just didn’t understand or appreciate all the great things Biden had done for them on the economy. On the rare occasions when he would admit that inflation existed, he would take no responsibility for it, but instead blame “Putin’s price hike” for high gas prices. Then he would then tie Ukraine’s hands with regard to the use of American weapons, thereby preventing the end of the war and “Putin’s price hike.”

Most of his term in office went this way, and it looks to be finishing as it started. In his address Wednesday explaining his decision to drop out of the race, he claimed America is not at war while the U.S. military is engaged with the enemy across the Middle East, which went from dormant under his predecessor to consumed by wildfire during Biden’s presidency.

Which brings us to the challenge facing Kamala Harris, Biden’s successor as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. She is currently vice president, so voters want the same from her that they wanted from Biden: acknowledge the troubling trends and present plans to reverse them.

Late this morning, Harris took a big step in the right direction by admitting an uncomfortable reality for her party: The progressive protesters bringing anti-Semitic street violence to America’s cities are deeply unpatriotic goons whose prime targets are Jews but whose victims include American democracy and the men and women who stand on the front lines to guard it.

Indeed, it was striking how much the self-proclaimed Hamas emissaries and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed on yesterday, most significantly the fact that Israel and the U.S. are fighting the same war and that to hate one is a gateway to hating the other.
Senate Republicans introduce federal anti-BDS bill
Senate Republicans are introducing legislation on Thursday to ban the federal government from contracting with entities that boycott Israel, the latest effort to expand anti-boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) legislation, which has proliferated at the state level, to the national level.

The bill, known as the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors (CHAI) Act, is being introduced by Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID) and other Senate Republicans. A version of the bill was introduced in the House last year, where it has 16 Republican and three Democratic co-sponsors.

It bars the administration from entering into contracts with any individuals that do not certify that they are not engaging in boycotts of Israel. It would require an anti-boycott notice in any solicitation for federal contracts and the termination of any contracts within 30 days if companies do not end their boycott of Israel.

“Antisemitism has no place in America. Businesses who boycott Israel only seek to normalize antisemitism and delegitimize our greatest friend and partner in the Middle East. Not a single taxpayer dollar ought to go to any entity engaged in this hateful behavior,” Risch said in a statement. “With the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act, we will ensure those seeking to do business with our government do not engage in acts of hate and antisemitism against the Israeli people.”

Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID), Mike Braun (R-IN), Katie Britt (R-AL), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rick Scott (R-FL) and John Thune (R-SD) are co-sponsoring the bill.
‘A Common Front Against Occupation’ CNN Fooled By Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation Stunt
Two events took place in the last few days that relate to post-war Gaza governance.

One was that China said it had brokered a deal between Hamas and Fatah in what was described as a declaration to form an interim “national reconciliation government” for the West Bank and Gaza after the war.

The announcement of the declaration came following several days of talks in Beijing, and was presented to the media by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, Fatah representative Mahmoud al-Aloul and Hamas representative Mussa Abu Marzuk.

Although described as a “unity” agreement, there have been numerous failed attempts at reconciliation between the rival factions since Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections. After those elections — the last time Palestinians held elections — the factions fought a bloody internecine war, resulting in Hamas expelling Fatah from Gaza.

The other event was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s well-publicized trip to Washington, which included a speech to Congress in which he vowed to fight for a total victory over Hamas, and reminded lawmakers of their shared interest in defeating Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups.

Behind the scenes and in the lead-up to Netanyahu’s US visit, another set of talks were taking place far away from China and well away from the presence of either Hamas or Fatah.

Last week, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan hosted a trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi attended by Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, who is Netanyahu’s closest adviser, and Brett McGurk, the director of Middle East policy for US President Joe Biden’s National Security Council.

The topic of discussion was reportedly a “reformed” Palestinian Authority governing Gaza after the war, as well as inviting a contingent of international forces that would enter Gaza to help ease the humanitarian situation, establish law and order, and facilitate the transition to proper governance.

While Netanyahu has previously rejected the possibility of a future Gaza under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, the prospect of a reformed PA that is led by a “new prime minister who is empowered and independent” as well as the United States taking a key role in any “day-after” initiative could be an incentive.

In short, the Abu Dhabi talks could realistically pave the way for a post-war Gaza solution that excludes both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in its current form.
Wikipedia’s Jewish Problem
These days, Wikipedia ranks its “perennial” go-to sources—The New York Times, The New Yorker, NPR, MSNBC, and BBC—as “generally reliable” and extends the ranking to the openly partisan far-left outlets like Haaretz, The Intercept, The Nation, and The Guardian. Al Jazeera and the NGO Amnesty International (both known for their anti-Israel bias) are rated as “generally reliable” as well. The far-left Israeli NGO B’Tselem isn’t included on this list, but, as Aaron Bandler notes in Jewish Journal, Wikipedia editors have staunchly defended its reliability and referenced it in articles. On the other hand, conservative sources such as Fox News, The New York Post, Washington Examiner, and Washington Free Beacon are coded various shades of unreliable, with the Beacon getting the “generally unreliable” grade—one notch above “deprecated.”

This ranking tells us what kind of slant we can expect in Wikipedia’s articles about Israel, Zionism, and anti-Zionist antisemitism. In the wake of Oct. 7, “generally reliable” sources have trafficked in disinformation, as when The New York Times splashed the Al Ahli hospital bombing hoax over its front page, helping spark violent anti-Jewish riots across the world; or when The New Yorker legitimized Holocaust inversion—a long-running staple of anti-Zionist propaganda originating in the 1960s USSR. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, have produced reporting that tells Israel’s side of the story and have looked far more critically at the anti-Israel campus protests. The “generally unreliable” Washington Free Beacon has arguably produced the most extensive reporting on the protests. Wikipedia editors, however, are warned against using the Beacon as a source, which is why of the 353 references accompanying Wikipedia’s article on the pro-Palestinian campus protests, the overwhelming majority is to liberal and far-left sources plus Al Jazeera.

One-sided sources are just one among a host of problems in Wikipedia articles related to Oct. 7 and the war that followed. In a World Jewish Congress report released in March, Dr. Shlomit Aharoni Nir documents numerous ways in which relevant Wikipedia entries have become de facto anti-Israel propaganda. From biased framing to omissions of key facts to stressing anti-Israel examples while ignoring the Israeli side of the story, to promoting fringe academic perspectives on Zionism—Wikipedia’s editors and administrators have actively worked to subvert the site’s neutrality policy on this topic. As in other instances, conflicts and bullying behavior predominate, with Israeli editors describing uniquely “hostile and disrespectful” treatment. Israeli users, who are most knowledgeable about the Oct. 7 events, often found themselves locked out of editing key articles, which were open for editing only to users who’d made over 500 edits. Several editors told Aharoni Nir that there were a number of activists who operated anonymously and were “responsible for the anti-Israel tone.”

Among some of the most troubling instances Aharoni Nir documented were calls for deletions of crucial articles. These included articles describing individual massacres on Oct. 7, such as those at Netiv HaAsara, Nir Yitzhak, Yakhini, and other kibbutzim and moshavim, as well as articles describing Hamas beheadings. Some of the calls succeeded. So did the call to erase the article about Nazism in Palestinian society (a “documented historical and sociological phenomenon,” notes Aharoni Nir). By contrast, the article normalizing equations between Israel and Nazi Germany—a propagandistic concept that has been weaponized against Jews for decades––remains on the site. Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s Arabic site openly abandoned the principle of neutrality last December when it temporarily went dark in solidarity with the Palestinians, then added the Palestinian flag to its logo and posted a pro-Palestinian statement at the top. Israel’s Wikipedia community protested. Wikimedia Foundation—you guessed it—did nothing.

Many, undoubtedly, will note the irony of the ADL being attacked by the Wikipedia woke, given the criticism the organization and its head Jonathan Greenblatt have faced from the Jewish community for their progressive tilt and failure to focus on left-wing antisemitism. But the ADL has long been in social justice warriors’ crosshairs. In 2020, 100 hard-left groups signed an open letter demanding that the left “drop the ADL” as an ally. Ten days after Oct. 7, the director of the pernicious Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism attacked the ADL for daring to stand up against anti-Israel hate. And in January, The Nation published a piece whose title, “The Anti-Defamation League: Israel’s Attack Dog in the US,” read like a Pravda headline circa 1970. The Wikipedia editors who won the battle over downgrading the ADL used this piece to back up their arguments, along with articles in the hard-left Guardian and Jewish Currents, further confirming that the action had been driven not by an honest consideration of sources but political bias.

In response to a letter by 43 Jewish organizations requesting it review the decision, Wikimedia issued a press release referring to Wikipedia’s supposedly inviolable mechanisms that must be preserved to keep it “neutral and free from institutional bias.” All content decisions are made by “Wikipedia’s volunteer community” in a transparent manner, with clear processes in place, and Wikimedia dares not interfere in the magic of that process.
The German Left’s Jewish Dilemma
As anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment surges around the world, the German Left’s commitment to combating antisemitism appears to be fading—a troubling trend driven, in large part, by a myopic focus on “Islamophobia” and by the growing influence of postcolonialism. While this reflects a broader pattern among Western progressives, it has especially troubling implications in Germany, given our history.

As a young, anarchist-leaning leftist touring Europe with my punk band in the 2000s, I shared the anti-Zionist bias prevalent among my peers. Our outlook was heavily influenced by political cues from American radicals. I was surprised to find that many far-left music venues in Germany had a different perspective. They often supported Israel under the banner of antifascism, as encapsulated in slogans like “Antifa means solidarity with Israel!”

I vividly recall arriving at a venue in eastern Germany and seeing the words “Lieber keine Soli als Pali-Soli” (“Better no solidarity at all than solidarity with Palestine”) spray-painted on the façade. Inside, flyers informed us that “cool kids don’t wear the keffiyeh.” Such sentiments were common in Germany’s radical Left underground at the time, where anti-Zionism was viewed with suspicion. A Swedish punk band had several German concerts cancelled because their drummer had sported a T-shirt with the slogan “Burn, Israel, burn.”

In a 2006 article in the anarchist periodical Rolling Thunder, one American activist expresses bewilderment at German antifascists’ support for Israel. “What ever happened to ‘no borders, no nations’?” he wonders. “That does not take into account our special situation,” counters a German radical cited in the piece. “Here we say, ‘destroy all nations, but Israel last.’” This statement implies that, due to the Holocaust, Germany bears a unique responsibility toward Jews. Since anti-Zionism can easily morph into antisemitic terror, German antifascists traditionally recognised the importance of supporting Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority country.

Whose Genocide Is It Anyway?
Fast forward two decades, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is once again in the forefront of world news. Although support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza among Germans dropped from 62 percent in November 2023 to 33 percent in May 2024, Germany remains committed to upholding Israel’s right to self-defence, protection of its citizens, and pursuit of those responsible for the 7 October attack. Overall, the debate here in Germany feels much more nuanced than elsewhere—including within leftist circles.


Former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk dies at age 73
Born in London to a Jewish family who had immigrated from Poland, he was raised in Sydney, Australia. He moved to Israel for his university studies and volunteered at a kibbutz in the south of the country during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

In 1982, he moved to the United States and began working for pro-Israel interest group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) before founding The Washington Institute think tank in 1985. He became an American citizen in 1993 and joined the US National Security Council a short while later.

He later sat on the board of the New Israel Fund, which serves as an umbrella group funding dozens of progressive civil society organizations operating in Israel and the West Bank.

While serving as US ambassador to Israel under then-US president Bill Clinton, Indyk helped to broker the Oslo Accords, which collapsed with the horrors of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

While Indyk leveled most of the blame on then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for the collapse of the peace process, he was similarly vocal in his criticism of the Israeli settlement policy and also issued calls for shared control over Jerusalem.

He went on to serve as the Obama administration’s special Middle East envoy and was a key figure in efforts to renew the peace process in 2013-2014, which were ultimately unsuccessful.

Indyk had recently been highly critical on social media of the current Netanyahu government and its handling of the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Usually a frequent tweeter, he had not posted since June 20, when he accused Netanyahu of “playing the martyr in a crisis he manufactured.”

Indyk told Foreign Affairs on October 7 that the unprecedented Hamas onslaught was “a total system failure on Israel’s part,” caused in part by “hubris—an Israeli belief that sheer force could deter Hamas, and that Israel did not have to address the long-term problems.”


Mapping the October 7th Massacre
The October 7th Geo-visualization Project - an interactive map - strives to provide a comprehensive representation of the atrocities committed by Hamas on that day.

The location of each victim is recorded with their story wherever possible, with detailed information on the massacres at Zikim Beach, Zikim Base, Netiv HaAsara, Sderot, Mefalsim Bend, Sha'ar HaNegev Junction, Yakhini, Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, Nahal Oz Base, Alumim, Be'eri, the Nova Festival, the Psyduck party, Kissufim, Re'im Base, Nirim, Nir Oz, Nir Yitzhak, Holit, and Ofakim.


Israel’s Great Defender
"It’s an uphill climb and there’s no doubt that the social media landscape makes this extremely difficult, because the information is weighted against us," says Eylon Levy.

In a wide-ranging interview in this week’s AJN, former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy says fighting the information war against Israel is an immense challenge that will require work, particularly with the younger generation.

Levy will be in Australia in September, when he will headline JNF Australia’s annual events in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Having studied at Oxford university, Levy says he isn’t surprised by the rampant antisemitism seen on campuses around the Western world.

“I remember over a decade ago, when I was at Oxford, a BDS motion came up with the student union and we managed to defeat it by a margin of six to one,” Levy told The AJN. “By the way, that’s unthinkable nowadays. I spoke with one of the proponents of the motion and I asked her why she was doing this, because it was clear she had no idea what she was talking about. She said, ‘I’m left-wing, it’s just part of what we do.’

“It’s just part of the bundle of causes that if you support LGBT rights and don’t like oil and you’re a vegetarian that you also think Israel should die,” Levy said.

“I think maybe what has surprised me is just how deeply entrenched and how little resistance that ideology has found.”

Articulate and sharp, Levy became a sought-after government spokesperson at the beginning of the war before politics saw him forced to leave the position.

“If it was up to me, I would have stayed.”
From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas: Kim Smiley & Arsen Ostrovsky
In this episode, we welcome renowned human rights attorney Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum. Arsen is at the helm of a global coalition of lawyers fighting for Israel and the Jewish people after the October 7th massacre by Hamas.

00:00 - Start
00:11 - Introduction
00:40 - Welcome to Empathy Empire
00:55 - Sleep post-October 7
01:52 - Journey from criminal to civil rights law
05:25 - Did you foresee the rise in antisemitism?
07:27 - Were you taken by surprise by Hamas?
09:07 - There were some indications about Hamas’s plan
10:44 - Suicidal empathy
12:48 - Seeking justice for the victims of Hamas
17:23 - Funding
18:22 - Can Hamas be eliminated?
21:03 - Personal impact
25:37 - We are all survivors
27:02 - Hamas is no different than the Nazis
27:58 - The radicalization of society
28:46 - Narrative wars
32:28 - Israel does not want this war
33:46 - Israel cares more about Palestinian lives than Hamas
34:38 - Who are the IDF?
37:40 - Great sacrifice
40:21 - Indicting the United Nations
42:49 - Israel on trial at the International Criminal Court
44:29 - Me too unless you’re a Jew
46:38 - What makes a good Israel advocate?
49:22 - What can people in the diaspora do to help?
51:31 - Allies are imperative
52:16 - Self-care
55:31 - Self-empathy
57:34 - Conclusion


U.S. Comedian Discovers Love for Hamas in Palestinian Authority
Most Palestinians that Jewish American comedian Zach Fox spoke to in Ramallah expressed unwavering support for Hamas, antisemitic views, and an antipathy towards a two-state solution, he told the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

"I didn't meet one person who didn't love Hamas....All of them hated Jews with every bone of their body." Fox, accompanied by a translator, producer and cameraman, did not reveal his Jewish identity.

Fox queried whether they saw the videos posted by Hamas on Oct. 7. "Everything," declared one woman. "And you are okay with everything they did?" "With everything they did," she confirmed.

When asked whether they felt that Hamas should release the remaining Israeli hostages, there was a resounding "no" from all the Palestinians.
He was interviewing a girl, and a Palestinian man came over and started shouting in Arabic. Fox's Arabic-speaking colleagues told him the man was upset that the girl was being interviewed, believing it to be immodest. The man then called over more men.

"All of a sudden, he comes up and says we have to delete the rest of our footage....My cameraman said, 'I'm very scared, they are threatening to kill us if we don't delete this.'"

"I've been making videos for 15 years, and I've never had to delete videos because someone's threatened to kill me."

"Do you want to live with the Israelis in peace?" Fox asked some women. "No. I want a one-state solution. No Israel. We should delete Israel." "So you would not be okay with a two-state solution?" "Of course not," came the reply.


Mural of keffiyeh-clad Anne Frank displayed in Norway
A mural depicting Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh has appeared on a wall in central Bergen, Norway, igniting a fierce debate about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

The work, created by anonymous street artist Töddel, draws parallels between Holocaust victims and Palestinian civilians while criticising Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.

The piece, titled "Death of the Innocent," is a commentary on the Israeli state's “genocide” of thousands of Palestinian children and women, according to a press release the artist sent to the TV 2 network.

"The work is also a comment on Israeli public figures' attempts to turn all calls for humanitarianism into antisemitism. It's too shameful, and they cannot get away with it even though we're living in 2024," according to the statement.

Earlier this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz rejected a request from his Norwegian counterpart Espen Barth Eide for an official visit to Israel. The decision came in the wake of Oslo’s controversial recognition of a Palestinian state and its stance on the Gaza War.

In April, Israel’s Foreign Ministry hit out at the Norwegian government after Oslo – in a statement marking six months since October 7 – blamed Israeli forces in Gaza for a “complete breakdown in compliance with international humanitarian law.”

In July, a statue of Anne Frank located near the famed Holocaust diarist’s first home in Amsterdam was graffitied with the word "Gaza.”


Andrew Pessin: Refuting the Common Campus Lies Told About Israel: "Genocide" cumulative and episodic
“People who believe absurdities will soon commit atrocities.” —commonly attributed to Voltaire

Thanks for reading Pariah--But The Truth, You Know, Ain't A Democracy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

In a forthcoming monograph—“Setting the Record Straight: Refuting the Common Campus Lies Told About Israel”—I examine, and refute, many of the major lies regularly disseminated about Israel by its many anti-Israel detractors, and show that, in many cases, the reverse is true: not only does Israel do the opposite of what is alleged, but it is Israel’s enemies who are guilty of the charges.

These lies individually and collectively illustrate the strategy of “The Big Lie,” a strategy endorsed by Hitler and the Nazis, in which the propagandist deliberately tells and repeats lies so enormous that people not only are inclined to believe them—falsely thinking that no one could lie so baldly, so the lie must in fact be true—but even continue to believe them in the face of counterevidence demonstrating their falsehood.

The lies fit neatly into a single package we’ll call the False Narrative:
There once was a country called Palestine, existing from time immemorial, ruled by the Palestinians and home to a few Jews with whom they got along nicely. Then the Zionist Jews began arriving from Europe in the 20th century, starting an ongoing “genocide” against Palestinians and expelling hundreds of thousands (“ethnic cleansing”) as part of their project of “settler-colonialism,” thus coming to “occupy” Palestinian land (in 1948 then more in 1967) and building “illegal settlements.” Palestinians who remained in Israel (and their descendants) are kept subjugated under “apartheid,” a political system that reflects and maintains “Jewish supremacy.” Those who were expelled to the “West Bank” (Judea/Samaria) now live under that crippling occupation, while those who were expelled to Gaza are kept in an “open air prison.” All of the above reveals that “Zionism is racism,” and so “resistance” to Zionism “by any means necessary” is entirely justified, including the rapes, torture, and massacre of October 7.

In this excerpt we look at the third lie in the False Narrative, alleging “genocide.”

Big Lie 3: “starting an ongoing genocide”
Anti-Israelists use the phrase “ongoing genocide” to suggest that in 1948, and over the decades, and now during the Hamas war ongoing as I write, Jews and Israel have been carrying out acts of genocide against the Arabs/Palestinians. It implies both specific episodes as well as an overall cumulative effect. Keep in mind that the term “genocide” means more than just that there have been many casualties over multiple military conflicts, which is true, in fact, for both sides. According to the 1948 International Genocide Convention, genocide constitutes “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”[1] Notice that “intent” is essential, and it involves targeting people on the basis of their membership in the relevant group. “Winning a war” against an army or a country is not considered “genocide,” even if there are significant civilian casualties, unless the war was motivated or guided by the intent to destroy that group. That fact alone takes most of the force out of the lie, not least because nearly every single war between the Arabs and the Jews beginning with 1948 was started by the Arabs. Jews have spent these decades defending themselves from genocidal attacks, not pursuing them.

That Jews were defending themselves from genocide is illustrated by one famous quote, among similar ones by many different Arab leaders. In 1947, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, warned that if the Jews were to try to establish a state, what would follow, by the Arabs, would be “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”[2] The Jews, when the Arabs launched first the civil war in late 1947 and then the multi-Arab army war in 1948, were not seeking a genocide against the Arabs; they accepted the U.N. partition proposal of 1947, and had the Arabs also accepted it there would simply have been peace between the two neighboring states. But the Arabs opted for war against the Jews instead, who, in response, therefore, were merely trying to avoid being the victims of a “Mongolian massacre.”

That settles the general question of “intent.”

Cumulative Genocide?

As for the “cumulative” charge of genocide, that is most easily refuted by looking at the numbers.
How extremism is being exported from Ramallah to US campuses
Birzeit University, a Palestinian institution based near Ramallah, has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. Five of its students, all members of the student council, were arrested for planning a “significant terror attack” at the behest of Hamas. They were caught with an assault rifle and thousands of dollars provided to them by the terrorist organization.

Several days earlier, members of Congress expressed alarm over the terrorist hotbed masquerading as a university.

“We find Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University … to be extremely concerning,” reads a July 15 letter sent by nearly 30 members of Congress to Harvard University’s Interim President Alan Garber. Of concern to them: a “student government [that] openly supports Hamas” and “names buildings after convicted terrorists”; a “policy of barring Israeli Jews from campus”; and the university’s praise for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, posting “Glory for martyrs, recovery for wounded ones, and freedom for the captives.”

Wait until Congress hears about Birzeit’s relationship with another Ivy League institution, Brown University. Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s student faction at Birzeit University parading a replica of the bomb used to kill 17-year-old Rina Shnerb.

Last year, a CAMERA report exposed the antisemitism and extremism emanating from Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies. The founding director of the center was a man by the name of Beshara Doumani, who led it for several years before moving on to advance a number of “Palestinian studies” programs within the center. As extensively detailed in the report, students in these programs are being fed horrific messages. Professors openly spread antisemitic blood libels. Terrorist organizations are legitimized. Historical massacres of Jews are normalized simply as Arabs “rising up.” The Brown Undergraduate Journal of Middle East Studies even openly declares it is opposed to only one form of self-determination: Jewish self-determination.

But here’s where Birzeit University comes into the picture. For a two-year period, from 2021-2023, Doumani served as president of Birzeit University. While Birzeit had long been known as a hotbed of extremism, under Doumani’s tenure it reached new heights.


UCLA didn’t protect Jews in ‘flagrant disregard for federal law,’ Orthodox Jewish groups say
The Orthodox Union Advocacy Center and Agudath Israel of America, both of which represent Orthodox Jews, filed a brief in support of Jewish students suing the University of California, Los Angeles in Frankel v. Regents of the University of California.

The students allege that the public university shirked its duty to protect them from anti-Jewish discrimination.

A “Jew exclusion zone” on campus last spring “used checkpoints, wristbands and barriers to stop Jews from passing unless they disavowed Israel’s right to exist,” the OU Advocacy Center stated. “Protesters even locked arms to deny Jews access.”

“There’s no point in having laws on the books if they are not enforced,” stated Nathan Diament, OU Advocacy executive director. “In a flagrant disregard for federal law, UCLA did nothing to protect Jewish students and faculty and enabled an antisemitic mob. Now, it’s up to the courts to enforce the U.S. Civil Rights Act and hold UCLA accountable.”
Princeton Poised To Promote Professor Who Occupied Campus Building
Princeton University is on the verge of promoting a professor who participated in the occupation of a campus building that disrupted university operations and led to more than a dozen arrests, according to an email reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The university has recommended that the classics scholar Dan-el Padilla Peralta, who along with 13 anti-Israel student protesters stormed Princeton’s historic Clio Hall in April, be promoted from associate to full professor, pending the approval of the university’s board of trustees. Peralta already has tenure, but the promotion would make him eligible for university leadership roles, including deanships.

"I'm sure you will want to join me in congratulating Dan-el on his promotion to a full professorship," the chair of the classics department, Barbara Graziosi, wrote to her colleagues on July 18. "This is still 'unofficial' news, because the Board of Trustees will have to rubber stamp the recommendation made by the committee that oversees promotions, but I was told I am allowed to share the news internally and do so with glee."

The board is all but certain to accept the recommendation, professors familiar with the matter said, given that the group signs off on virtually all appointments. Princeton and Peralta did not respond to requests for comment.

The promotion comes as Princeton’s peer universities have taken a soft-on-crime approach to the unlawful and at times violent protests that have rocked campuses since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. The Harvard Corporation this month reversed its decision to withhold degrees from 11 students who led an encampment in Harvard yard, one of whom is a Rhodes Scholar set to attend Oxford University next year. Other schools, including Northwestern and Middlebury, ended their encampments by negotiating with protesters and acceding to many of their demands.

At Princeton, Peralta played a leading role in the most disruptive protest the campus had experienced in years. He and another professor, sociologist Ruha Benjamin, joined 13 students in occupying Clio Hall, the home of Princeton’s graduate school administration, as 200 additional protesters cheered them on from the outside.
Title VI investigation of religious discrimination opened in Northern California school district
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) began a review for potential discrimination based on shared ancestry at West Contra Costa Unified School District near downtown San Francisco in Richmond, Calif.

The OCR started the investigation on Thursday into whether the district violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It did not name the reasons behind the complaint but classified the case as potential “National Origin Discrimination Involving Religion.”

JNS contacted the district and requested the letter it received from the Ed Department notifying it of the investigation but did not hear back.

The Northern California district includes 26,312 students and serves the cities of Richmond, San Pablo, Pinole, El Cerrito and Hercules, as well as the unincorporated areas of Bayview-Montalvin Manor, East Richmond Heights, El Sobrante, Kensington, North Richmond and Tara Hills.
University Of Windsor Faculty Members, In Hill Times Commentary, Decry Lack Of Surrender By Universities To Anti-Israel Hate Mobs Who Occupied Campuses
On July 18, the Hill Times ran an opinion piece written by Naved Bakali, a professor of anti-racism studies at the University of Windsor who has previously denied Israel’s right to exist, co-authored by Jillian Rogin, his colleague at Windsor’s school of law. In their piece entitled: “Political interference in University of Windsor’s autonomy will have a steep cost,” Bakali and Rogin recounted the University of Windsor’s handling of their campus’ anti-Israel encampments, claiming that “Unlike other institutions, where confrontations often involved campus police, riot squads, or even lawsuits…Windsor achieved a peaceful resolution through genuine dialogue and good-faith negotiations.”

They went on to argue that objections to the agreement by Member of Parliament (MP) Anthony Housefather, the recently appointed special adviser on Jewish community relations and antisemitism for the federal government, are not only an “abuse of power”, but “threaten the sanctity of academic freedom.” Both these claims are absurd, through and through.

First, the suggestion that Housefather’s objection to the agreement is an “abuse of power” given to him under his new position as special adviser is ridiculous. His entire mandate is to confront and object to instances of antisemitism and anti-Jewish sentiment. It’s unclear how Bakali and Rogin felt his objection to being outside of that remit, rather it seems they just don’t like the agreement being characterised as “anti-Jewish” (their words).

University of Windsor’s Agreement With Anti-Israel Hate Mobs Is Anti-Jewish
But the agreement is, arguably,anti-Jewish, whether they like it or not. The phrasing of the agreement frames Israel as an illegal, settler colonial state, effectively erasing Jewish history and indigeneity to the land. The rewriting of Jewish history, and the capitulation to the anti-Jewish BDS movement (which seeks to boycott, divest and sanction any organization or individual from, or indeed supportive of, the Jewish state) is seen by most within the Jewish community as deeply troubling and antisemitic at its core. If the majority of Jewish Canadians – or, more importantly, Jewish students at Windsor – feel the agreement to be ‘anti-Jewish,’ Housefather should have an obligation to oppose it.

Bakali and Rogin, instead, attempted to lecture the Jewish community as to what is or is not antisemitism. They even went so far as to parrot the long-standing trope that Jews are ‘weaponizing’ antisemitism in order to silence their critics. Imagine someone suggesting that any other group was ‘weaponizing’ racism against them in order to sneakily manipulate the system. The reality is that if they were discussing anyone other than Jews, Bakali and Rogin would be universally condemned for attempting to define another group’s understanding and definition of racism against themselves.


BBC Radio 4 fails to explain anti-Israel slogan in eighty-eight minutes
Whewell’s choice of interviewees includes Palestinian and Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria, “activists” who are not always presented with full transparency such as Dror Etkes of the political NGO ‘Kerem Navot’ and Arab and Jewish Israelis from the centre of the country. Listeners hear a variety of views and opinions, including some which prompted notably tepid reactions from Whewell.

For example, one of Whewell’s contributors – Rashid – claims that Israelis living in Judea & Samaria are “trying to steal the Palestinian farmers’ style of life, you know, as shepherds. Even the same food, they’re trying to steal the culture, not just the land”. Whewell’s reply to that absurd claim is “They’re taking over your culture?”.

Another contributor – an Israeli “activist” at a location which listeners are not told is an illegal encampment in a military firing zone in the Jordan Valley – responds to Whewell’s question about why people are living in shacks and tents with the claim that the Bedouin “live in nature”, adding that “Some of the people in the Jordan Valley have houses in the towns in Palestine. It’s not so much about poverty. It’s more about the insistence to live your own way of life”. Whewell’s curiosity as to the strategy that lies behind people illegally setting up second homes in a closed military zone in Area C ends there.

When the same interviewee – a singer called Meira Asher – brings up the smears ‘coloniser’ and ‘apartheid’, Whewell’s response is to tap into another slogan used by anti-Israel activists.

Whewell: “So you’re saying this is a situation of colonisation that needs to be decolonised.”

Perhaps most revealing is Whewell’s response to an explanation he receives concerning a map on the wall of the council offices in the village of Duma (most recently in the headlines as the hometown of an ISIS-inspired terrorist), which he describes as a “map of Palestine from the river to the sea” which his interviewee tells him shows “Palestinian villages destroyed” in 1948 and 1967. Anwar Dawabshe goes on to state that “one day the people who are in this village will go back to their village in 1948”and when Whewell asks about the Jews living in Israel, he is told that:

Dawabshe: “They can go back home to Britain, to Morocco or whatever place they came from.”

Whewell: “They cannot stay here?”

Dawabshe: “No, they cannot stay here.”

Whewell could of course have ended his ostensible efforts to “find out” what the slogan ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ as chanted at anti-Israel demonstrations “really meant” at that point. Instead, he chose to seek out a Jewish Israeli in Shilo in order to present an equivalence promoting mirror image to his listeners and avoided any serious discussion of the ethics of the ideology which seeks to destroy a sovereign country.
High on narratives, low on facts_ BBC’s Orla Guerin in southern Lebanon
Since last October BBC audiences have seen a number of items that were the product of BBC journalists’ UNIFIL escorted trips to southern Lebanon, including the following:

Like most of the additional BBC reporting on the situation in the north of Israel and southern Lebanon since October 2023, those reports were particularly notable for their failure to even mention UN Security Council resolution 1701 and UNIFIL’s failure to enforce that 2006 resolution, according to which the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah is barred from maintaining a military presence south of the Litani river – some 30 kms north of the border with Israel.

That crucial background – along with any explanation of the real agenda of the Iranian proxy Hizballah – was once again absent from filmed (“Are Israel and Hezbollah edging closer to all-out war?”) and written reports (“Smoke on the horizon – Israel and Hezbollah edge closer to all-out war”) by Orla Guerin which appeared on July 17th.

Reporting from southern Lebanon and from a Hizballah rally in Beirut, Guerin does however promote some noteworthy narratives, the most ridiculous of which is the claim that Israeli aircraft operating in the region break the sound barrier in order to “spread fear”.
AP says damages suit for use of Oct. 7 freelancer photo ‘fatal blow’ to press freedom
The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters news agencies have asked the Jerusalem District Court to dismiss a lawsuit seeking NIS 25 million ($6.8 million) in damages from the news organizations for their use of photos taken by controversial photojournalists during the October 7 Hamas invasion and atrocities.

AP argued that accepting the lawsuit would strike “a fatal blow” to freedom of press and freedom of speech, and would limit the freedom of media outlets operating in Israel in the future.

The news agencies made their arguments in defense statements filed on Thursday to the Jerusalem District Court in response to the damages suit submitted to the court in March by parents of five victims of the Supernova Festival Hamas massacre on October 7.

In its defense statement, AP noted that the photojournalists it had purchased photographs from were not AP employees but independent photographers, and that therefore AP did not assign them to cover the Hamas assault.

But it also contended that the photos and videos it published from those photojournalists provided “a better understanding of the nature and extent of the atrocities,” and that a ruling in favor of the damages suit would harm the public’s “right to know and recognize reality, even when it is disturbing and shocking.”

Both AP and Reuters said they sympathized with the plaintiffs and those affected by the October 7 attacks, but rejected the claims in the lawsuit.

In March, the parents of five victims of the Supernova Festival massacre filed a civil suit for damages against AP and Reuters, alleging that photojournalists Hassan Abdel Fattah Eslaiah, Hatem Ali, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, Ashraf Amra and Ali Mahmoud, who filed photographs of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas terrorists, were in fact a component of the attacks themselves, and were not conducting legitimate journalistic work.

Since AP and Reuters posted the photos they received from these journalists as the attacks unfolded, in some cases giving only the agency’s name as photo credit, and continued to make the pictures available for sale on their websites, the suit maintained in a complex legal argument that they had culpability in the death of the plaintiffs’ children.
CBC Ombudsman Concedes Multiple Issues Raised By HonestReporting Canada
Much of what has been widely treated as self-evident in the current Hamas-Israel war – from the alleged famine and unsubstantiated casualty statistics in Gaza, and more – cannot stand up to critical scrutiny, and is in fact little more than disinformation disseminated from one source: Hamas, via its various channels, including its so-called “Gaza Ministry of Health.”

Relatively early in the war, on November 5, CBC News aired a report during its program The National entitled: “Gaza refugee camps bombed as ceasefire calls grow.” The broadcast, filed by reporter Ellen Mauro, featured a clip of a Gazan girl who lost both her legs in an explosion, which CBC News attributed to Israel, saying it was due to “an Israeli strike.”

But as was pointed out in a subsequent complaint by HonestReporting Canada’s Executive Director, Mike Fegelman, the explosion could certainly have been attributable to an errant Palestinian rocket, as happened two weeks earlier at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, when a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) errant rocket struck the healthcare centre, while Israel was blamed for it.

Following HonestReporting Canada’s complaint, on July 19, CBC’s ombudsman, Jack Nagler, released a review which conceded that the report made claims which it could not verify or confirm.

While Nagler resisted calls that a formal correction was warranted, his acknowledgement that the news report attributed the explosion to an Israeli rocket attack and that this could not be proven is significant, as much of the news media coverage of the Hamas-Israel war simply repeats what Hamas alleges, and not what is actually taking place.

In the same review, Nagler noted another complaint filed by HonestReporting Canada regarding the behaviour of Samira Mohyeddin, a now former CBC journalist.

On November 6, Mohyeddin re-shared a post on her personal X (formerly Twitter) account from an Israeli government minister who thanked Israeli soldiers for arresting Ahed Tamimi, a young Palestinian woman for posting violent death threats against Israelis.

Mohyeddin, a vocal disseminator of anti-Israel propaganda, took issue with that, and criticized the Israeli minister for “celebrating the arrest” of the woman, because she “was taken in the middle of the night.”
CBC As It Happens Gives Member Of Palestinian Legal Team Platform To Spout Anti-Israel Disinformation
On July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released an advisory opinion stating that, in its view, Israel is an occupier of “Palestinian territory.”

The court, headed by Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s former ambassador to the United Nations who, during his tenure, voted to condemn Israel hundreds of times and voted against every condemnation of Iran, claimed that all Israeli presence in Judea & Samaria (called the “West Bank” by news media outlets), as well as eastern Jerusalem, are illegal.

Following the ICJ advisory opinion, the CBC radio program As It Happens – a consistent disseminator of anti-Israel disinformation (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) – decided to explore the topic with the help of a guest in a July 19 episode.

As It Happens Has A Long History of Anti-Israel Bias
Given the sordid track record of As It Happens when it comes to Israel, it is hardly surprising that the singular guest discussing Israel’s so-called “occupation” was none other than Philippe Sands, a member of the Palestinian legal team at the world court. No Israeli voice was interviewed, giving Sands’ radical views a total monopoly.

During the conversation with co-hosts Chris Howden and Nil Köksal, Sands entirely ignored Israel’s extensive and undeniable legal rights to its historic homeland, repeatedly referring to “Israel’s occupation,” and saying “it must end.”

At no point during the conversation did Howden or Köksal ever press Sands on exactly what constitutes the Palestinians’ legal rights, given that at no point in history has there ever been a Palestinian nation-state, that the lands in question are undeniably part of three thousand years of ancestral Jewish territory, and that Israel possesses extensive legal title to the land.
CTV News Interview Erases Israel’s Legal And Ancestral Rights To Judea & Samaria
In a July 20 news broadcast, CTV News reported on the International Court of Justice’s opinion judgment the previous day which alleged that Israel’s “occupation” of Judea and Samaria (called the “West Bank” by news media outlets), as well as eastern Jerusalem, is “unlawful.”

After mentioning that Israel’s foreign minister has called the world court’s ruling, “fundamentally wrong”, CTV showed a brief clip of Riad Malki, a Palestinian Foreign Policy advisor, who said that “The ICJ fulfilled its legal and moral duties with this historic ruling. All states must now uphold their clear obligations.” CTV News then featured an interview with Bruno Gelinas-Faucher, a professor of International Law at the University of New Brunswick. CTV neglected to mention that their chosen “expert” himself, according to his twitter account, previously worked for the ICJ, which could potentially make his judgment on the world court’s credibility flawed.

Gelinas-Faucher doubled down on his predictable support of the ICJ’s ruling, saying “this is a judicial body, so it’s not a political body where we are looking at political rhetoric from one side or the other about each side trying to justify what they are doing, this is a judicial body that looked at the law and evidence and that …rendered its opinion looking impartially at law and evidence.”

If only that were the case. Unfortunately the ICJ ruling represents a weaponization of its judicial powers in the political arena against Israel. CTV News would have done well to mention that the new president of the ICJ, Nawaf Salam of Lebanon, used to be Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations. In that capacity, he voted against Israel over 200 times as well as voting against any General Assembly resolution condemning Iran’s abuse of its own civilians. It is hard to take Gelinas-Faucher seriously in his recommendation of the ICJ as “impartial.” Yet CTV News did so, and offered no critique, questioning, nor did it interview an expert from the Israeli side.

History does not support the ICJ’s ruling. The lands that the ICJ ruled on were won by Israel from Jordan in 1967 in The Six Day War, when it defended itself against another Arab attack. However, these were not Jordan’s territories originally; they were part of the League of Nations’ original mandate for Israel. Jordan invaded them when they fought against Israel in the 1948 War of Independence.

As pointed out by international law professor Eugene Kontorovich, “under International law, occupation occurs when a country takes over the sovereign territory of another country. But the West Bank was never part of Jordan, which seized it in 1949 and ethnically cleansed its entire Jewish population. Nor was it ever the site of an Arab-Palestinian state.”


The Real Reason Hamas Carried Out Its October 7 Massacre
The Hamas document [which purports to explain why it massacred 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023] lists a number of reasons, all of which can be easily refuted, as to why the terrorist group launched its attack on Israel.

This claim is totally untrue: there are absolutely no Israeli "plans" to split the Al-Aqsa Mosque into a Jewish and Muslim area or to convert it into a Jewish site.

The purported "plans" exist only in the imagination of Hamas and other Palestinians. It is simply part of a Palestinian campaign of defamation against Israel to try to justify the murder of Jews.

According to the "status quo," formulated by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in 1967, Jews would not be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount but would be able to visit the site.

While Israel has respected the status quo, Muslims have consistently violated it in an apparent attempt to deepen their hold on the holy site.

It is also important to note that Hamas and many Palestinians consider all Jews "settlers," regardless of whether they live in Tel Aviv, or in a settlement in the West Bank, or in New York.

Hamas further claims that it launched its attack because of "thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails who are experiencing deprivation of their basic rights."

Most of the "detainees" Hamas is referring to are convicted terrorists who were imprisoned for murdering or attempting to murder people (usually Jews). For many years, these terrorist prisoners have enjoyed comfortable conditions, especially when it comes to entertainment and leisure. A variety of exercise equipment – including ping-pong tables, stationary bicycles and pull-up bars (in addition to chess) – is available. Each prison cell is equipped with a television, and the prisoners have access to at least 10 channels. Palestinian prisoners, in addition, are entitled to family visits and unlimited access to lawyers.

In contrast, both the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip have been accused by human rights organizations of "systematically torturing critics" in detention. A report published by Human Rights Watch in 2022 said: "PA and Hamas security forces routinely taunt and threaten detainees, use solitary confinement and beatings, including whipping their feet, and force detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including hoisting their arms behind their backs with cables or rope, to punish and intimidate critics and opponents and elicit confessions..."

As of October 7, 2023, an estimated 18,000 - 18,500 residents of the Gaza Strip held work permits issued by the Israeli authorities to enable them to work in Israel, where their pay is five times higher than in Gaza. As noted last month: "Many of those workers to whom Israel opened its doors were apparently working in Israel by day, and by night returning to Gaza and providing Hamas with highly detailed maps and drawings of every house in Israel's border communities, and reports about everyone in them, including the pet dogs."

Israel can only conclude that "no good deed goes unpunished."
MEMRI: A Pillar Of Hamas Foreign Policy: Support From Its Three Closest Western Allies – Norway, Ireland, And Spain
On May 22, 2024, Norway, Ireland, and Spain announced that they would recognize a State of Palestine, formalizing the move on May 28. While the existence of elements in these countries that have a long history of antisemitic sentiment and actions, and open hostility towards Israel, make such a move unsurprising, since October 7, each of these countries has shown a great deal of antagonism towards Israel, and has expressed support for Hamas's position.

The pro-Palestinian positions and moves of this Norwegian-Irish-Spanish triad, which has tremendously helped Hamas, has become the backbone for support for them across Europe and globally, paving the way for others to follow suit.

There is a clear trend of recognition of a Palestinian state in the West. Nine countries in all have done so since April 2024. Additionally, Malta said it would do so "when such recognition can make a positive contribution, and when the circumstances are right," and Belgium discussed it but so far has not reached an agreement. Luxembourg has hinted that it may soon follow; the new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has as well. In France, the left-wing parties that joined the coalition that triumphed in the recent elections are also pushing for recognizing a Palestinian state.

According to the website of the Palestinian Authority, some 140 countries outside Western Europe already recognize a Palestinian state. Some of them – notably Russia, China, and South Africa – have official relationships with Hamas.

Norwegian political elements began inviting Hamas officials to the country in 2006, and top Norwegian government representatives have been meeting with them, building a relationship with them, and supporting them since 2007. Even post-October 7, Norway has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization. In the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein, which is also today the largest party in Northern Ireland, has maintained a decades-long relationship with Hamas. Additionally, senior Spanish officials have expressed support for the Palestinian "right to resist" and for Palestine "from the river to the sea."

Hamas Praises Its Western Allies: Norway, Ireland, And Spain
Hamas, for its part, has praised the three countries for their support, recognizing that this has boosted its stature and facilitated its anti-Israel activity. It has also said that this support is both the result of and validation for jihad and armed resistance, and has called on other Western governments to do likewise. In a statement published May 22, the day the three countries announced their intention to recognize a Palestinian state, Hamas said: "We welcome the recognition of the State of Palestine by Norway, Ireland, and Spain, and we view this as an important step towards realizing our rights on our land and establishing our independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. We call on countries throughout the world to recognize our legitimate national rights and to support the struggle of our Palestinian nation towards liberation and independence and towards the end of the Zionist occupation of our lands."

Hamas official Husam Badran, who is currently in Doha, Qatar and is involved in the ceasefire talks on Gaza, said on May 22: "The European states' recognition of Palestine is the result of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the steadfastness of the resistance."


PMW: Patrons of Pay-for Slay: EU and World Bank are accessories to terror funding
The EU and the World Bank continue to delude themselves into thinking that their financial aid to the Palestinian Authority is not used to fund terrorism. Palestinian Media Watch suggests that the ethical test of eligibility for funding should not be about where the money goes but about who the recipient is.

PMW has been reporting continually about the PA’s dire financial situation, caused exclusively by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ insistence that even if the PA has only one penny left, it will continue to pay prisoners and Martyrs. A commentator on PA TV recently explained just how the PA places itself in this predicament:
Financial commentator Thabet Abu Al-Rous: “Despite the Israeli restrictions, the Palestinian side and the Palestinian [PA] government will pay the money that the families of the prisoners and the Martyrs deserve… The payments to the families of the prisoners and Martyrs total 52 million shekels every month. The PA is paying this obligation, while Israel is deducting this, so it is as if this amount was deducted from the PA twice.”

[Official PA TV, June 29, 2024]

52 million shekels is equivalent to about $14 million a month.

World Bank increases aid to Palestinian Authority dramatically
Fortunately for the PA, however, it can rely on the World Bank and EU to come to its rescue. At the beginning of July, the World Bank announced that it would be granting the PA as much as $300 million, up from its usual annual grant of $70 million. PA Prime Minister Muhammad Mustafa: “The World Bank Board of Directors decided a few days ago to increase the annual grant that it provides to the State of Palestine from approximately $70 million to $300 million per year. This is an unprecedented sum in the history of Palestine’s relations with the World Bank.”

[Official PA TV News, July 3, 2024]/i>

New EU grant to the Palestinian Authority
On July 19, 2024, the EU announced that it would be granting the PA a total of 400 million euros after it announced in May that it had donated 25 million euros in a second tranche of assistance meant for the salaries and pensions of PA civil servants. “The government announced today that after months of efforts, the European Commission has approved an emergency financial assistance package totaling €400 million. This aid will be disbursed in grants and loans in three installments over the coming months for various purposes aimed at mitigating the financial and economic crisis.”

[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, July 19, 2024]


Houthi chief vows ‘inevitable’ response to Israeli strikes on Hodeida
A Houthi response to Israeli airstrikes near Yemen’s Hodeida is coming, the Iran-backed rebel group’s leader declared in a televised speech on Thursday.

Israeli fighter jets struck Houthi oil and fuel facilities at Yemen’s port of Hodeida on Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding 87, a day after a Houthi drone hit Tel Aviv, killing a man.

“The response is inevitable,” Abdul Malik al-Houthi said.

The group’s attacks on Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza will continue and not be deterred by the Israeli airstrikes, he added.

“Everything that happens from the side of the Israeli enemy will be more incentive for revenge,” al-Houthi said.

The Houthis are reportedly preparing to strike sensitive targets in Israel and in the region after Saturday’s airstrikes.

Sources close to the Yemeni militia quoted by the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily said that Houthi military leaders have added new items to their “target bank.”

The Yemeni rebel group — in cooperation with other members of the so-called Axis of Resistance of Iran-backed paramilitary groups in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria — was said to be planning to hit the Israeli Mediterranean ports of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Haifa, in addition to the Red Sea port of Eilat.
Walter Russell Mead: Team Biden No Longer Sees Detente with Iran as Viable
Vice President Kamala Harris's decision that an earlier commitment to the Zeta Phi Beta sorority's convention in Indianapolis mattered more than a speech to a joint session of Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of one of America's closest allies, is fueling rumors the Harris Middle East policy would differ significantly from Mr. Biden's. It may also encourage the Iranians, sensing weakness and division within the administration, to turn up the heat.

Iran has never been closer to a nuclear weapon than it is today, and American officials worry that Vladimir Putin, as part of his anti-Western campaign, might help Iran across the nuclear finish line faster than U.S. or Israeli officials thought possible. Washington's patience is wearing thin. The closing months of the Biden administration could see U.S. forces engaged in direct attacks on Iranian naval vessels or against Iran itself.

People in government, former officials and informed observers tell me that the pressure inside the U.S. government for military strikes against Iran is building, and further Houthi provocations are likely to prompt a dramatically stronger response.

Team Biden no longer sees detente with Iran as viable. Iran's rejection of President Biden's offer to re-enter the nuclear deal was sobering. Iran's expansion of support for proxies and terrorists across the region hammered the message home. Iran wants a hostile relationship with both the U.S. and Israel.

If Iran is irreconcilable, the only route to stability in the Middle East involves a partnership between Israel and conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. needs to work with the regional players who agree with us on the basics. Key Arab states believe that their own economic and security interests depend on strategic alignment with both Israel and the U.S.

Disrupting the U.S.-Arab-Israeli entente is Iran's objective and also is important to Russia and China. All the revisionist powers loathe the idea of a U.S.-led alliance system stabilizing the Middle East.
Iran Is Still Trying to Kill American Officials
Donald Trump’s recent brush with death at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania has refocused attention on the vulnerability of current and former senior U.S. government officials to assassination plots, including those by the Islamic Republic of Iran. While there is no evidence that the Pennsylvania shooter, Thomas Crooks, was acting on behalf of Iran or any other foreign government, the Biden administration stated in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt that there had been an uptick in Iranian threats against the former president. At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on Monday, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle evaded questions about whether the Secret Service had repeatedly denied the Trump campaign additional security during that same time period. She resigned the next day.

Iran has repeatedly threatened former senior Trump administration officials, citing their supposed role in the 2020 strike that killed Iran’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, the No. 2 official in Iran. Posting on Twitter at the time, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that those who had murdered General Soleimani and who had helped kill him would be punished: “This revenge will certainly happen at the right time.”

In January 2023, a social media account in Iran affiliated with the regime posted mock mugshots of 26 current and former U.S. officials, including National Security Council officials from the Trump administration Robert Greenway, Victoria Coates, and Matthew Pottinger, calling them “most wanted fugitives.” “There is no night that we sleep without thinking about you ...,” the post stated. “Revenge is near. Very near!”

That same month, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) posted a video on a social media site explicitly threatening some 15 former Trump administration officials—including Greenway, Coates, and Pottinger—with imminent assassination “by drone, sniper fire, bomb, lethal injection, or stabbing.”

The administration had not responded to their letter because the officials negotiating with Iran had not wanted to call greater attention to Tehran’s ongoing assassination plots.

These former officials appealed for help to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Their letter to Garland, which they sent a full 18 months ago, remains unacknowledged, they confirmed. “We thought long and hard before writing that letter, and even longer before going public with the lack of a response,” said Pottinger, a former assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser. Pottinger was not added to Iran’s blacklist until 2022 after a Yahoo News article falsely claimed in 2021 that he had participated in the 2020 drone strike. (Pottinger tried hard to persuade Yahoo News to correct its false story, which the news outlet refused to do. Yahoo News’ former editor did not respond to an emailed request for comment.)

The 26 former U.S. government officials are hardly the most senior officials who have been threatened by Iran. Topping what U.S. officials informally call Iran’s long-standing “kill list” is Donald Trump, along with several of his former senior officials—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel, Special Envoy for Iran Brian Hook, then U.S. Central Command Commander General (Retired) Frank McKenzie, who was in charge of the Soleimani operation, and National Security advisers John Bolton and Robert O’Brien.


Bill is feared to trigger wave of antisemitism against Turkey’s Jews
A bill currently being fast-tracked by a pro-Hizbullah and Palestinian faction in the Turkish parliament risks targeting not only the entire Jewish community in Turkey but also dual Turkish-Israeli nationals living outside the country, writes Abdullah Bozkurt in Nordic Monitor:

An anti-Israel faction, spearheaded by Turkey’s pro-Iran Hizbullah group and endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing party, has made significant strides in advancing a bill that would permit the revocation of Turkish citizenship for dual Israeli nationals, the confiscation of their assets and their criminal prosecution.

The move is feared to trigger a new wave of antisemitic campaigns against Jews in Turkey, already under pressure regardless of whether they hold Israeli citizenship or are accused of involvement in alleged human rights violations in the Hamas-Israel conflict.

The bill was first proposed by HÜDA-PAR, the political arm of Turkey’s Hizbullah and a fundamentalist party officially allied with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), on December 28, 2023. It was referred to four separate committees for debate, with the Justice Committee designated as the primary venue for its review.

No bill has a chance of clearing any committee in the Turkish parliament unless it is endorsed and advanced by Erdogan’s party, which dominates both the General Assembly and the committees. Many assumed this bill would be no different and would not be taken up on the agenda.

However, something very unusual happened in the Turkish parliament on May 7, signaling that this situation was quite different. Four Hizbullah lawmakers —Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu, Şahzade Demir, Serkan Ramanlı and Faruk Dinç — who managed to enter parliament for the first time by running on Erdogan’s party ticket in last year’s elections, submitted a motion asking the assembly to consider the bill directly, bypassing any review and debate in the committees.


New $50 million Texas fund to scout for battle-tested Israeli defense tech
A group of Texas-based and Israeli entrepreneurs have raised $50 million to create a new fund to invest in Israeli early-stage defense tech startups and help them expand their footprint to US markets.

Founded in the wake of the October 7 onslaught by the Hamas terror group on southern Israel, Texas Venture Partners (TVP) said it closed its debut funding round on the symbolic date of July 10 (7/10).

The Austin, Texas-based fund plans to invest between $1 million to $4 million into early-stage Israeli defense tech startups. Led by two Austin-based entrepreneurs, Canadian businessman Lorne Abony, and Israeli-born Tal Shmueli, the fund will provide startups with professional mentoring and financial stewardship to advance their development and help expand their business operations to Texas.

“After October 7th, it became even clearer that Texas was the most business-friendly, values-aligned and welcoming place for Israelis and Jewish founders to start and grow their businesses in,” said TVP managing partner Shmueli. “Israeli entrepreneurs are returning from the war with an intimate understanding of the modern battlefield and its challenges.”

“They have the skills and motivation to solve them,” he remarked.

Shmueli told The Times of Israel that the fund will be selecting Israeli startups that develop technologies that have “immediate impact on the battlefield or a strategic, long-lasting influence on national security.”

The fund will be scouting for Israeli tech and systems that match the needs cited in the US Department of Defense list of 14 critical technology areas to maintain national security. The areas include biotechnology, quantum science, trust AI and autonomy, space technology, and renewable energy.
Why Israel Ranks among the Happiest Nations
Israel continues to be ranked among the top 10 happiest countries, according to the UN's global happiness index. Following the traumatic events of Oct. 7, Israel's happiness rating actually improved. Israel's Health Ministry even reported a decrease in suicides from October-December compared to previous years.

The events of Oct. 7 spurred a wave of solidarity and mutual support in Israel. The sense of "togetherness" and shared destiny became palpable. People discovered a mental fortitude and a sense of meaning that transcended individual struggles. This collective resilience is a crucial factor in Israel's happiness.

Another factor contributing to Israel's high happiness index is the degree of excitement in daily life. While Israel may rank low on the question of "How much do you experience calmness in your life?" the thrill and excitement of living in such a dynamic environment significantly contribute to psychological well-being. Research shows that 55% of Israelis prefer a life filled with excitement over a tranquil one. This constant stimulation, whether positive or challenging, keeps life engaging and fulfilling.
Away from despair and toward hope: A conversation with Elie Wiesel’s student and friend
‘Had anyone told us when we were liberated that we would be compelled in our lifetime to fight antisemitism once more, or worse, that we would have to prove that our suffering was genuine,” Elie Wiesel wrote, “... we would have had no strength to lift our eyes from the ruins.” (From The Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences, 1990).

Today, we are standing in the presence of evil incarnate and searching for words. Is it possible to carry feelings of despair and hope simultaneously in the face of evil? I turn to Elie Wiesel’s teachings and to his student and friend Dr. Avraham (Alan) Rosen for words.

In 1945, after the liberation, language had ceased to exist for Wiesel. He was unable to find the appropriate words to reveal the horrors he had witnessed and suffered. A Holocaust survivor, writer, humanitarian, and winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel asked, “How is one to communicate that which by its very nature defies language? How is one to explain the inexplicable? And then, how can one be sure that the words, once uttered, will not betray, distort the message they bear?” (A Jew Today, 1979).

He waited 10 years to write his first memoir, Night (1956), and in his final memoir, Open Heart (2012), a bookend to Night, he continued to wrestle with the limitations, the insufficiencies, of words: “... every sentence, every word, reflects an experience that defies all comprehension.”

Coming full circle in Open Heart, he wrote, “There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.”

In 1978, Rosen, a scholar, author, and lecturer, began his studies as an undergraduate, and then a doctoral student with Wiesel, who was a professor of humanities at Boston University in Massachusetts. Rosen received a master’s degree and a PhD in literature and religion, concentrating on catastrophe as dealt with in literature. They studied together for 10 years, forging an enduring, close teacher-student bond, and collaborated on various projects.

Despair? “We cannot allow the enemy to set the terms for us,” says Rosen. “The enemy has no right to dictate despair. We need to persevere to live, despite what is intolerable. With perseverance, we can overcome any obstacles to our survival. We need to give each other a sense of being able to go forward, and revel in Jewish life. How wrong it would be to yield to the temptation of despair.”

In A Song for Hope, Wiesel wrote, “When there seems to be no hope, there is at least a quest for hope – and that quest itself is strong enough in motivation to affirm life and its sacredness and its sacred purpose” (92ny.org/archives).


Where Do Jews Come From? | Explained
Israel, a land of ancient heritage and diverse cultures, is deeply intertwined with Jewish identity. Along with ancient biblical narratives and modern archaeological discoveries, Yirmiyahu Danzig delves into his own family’s history to uncover the profound historical connection all Jews have with Israel, no matter where their families “come from.”

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:44 Yirmiyahu's life as a Jew of color
01:36 Descendants of Abraham
02:25 Jews from Guyana / Caribbean Jews
04:15 The Spanish Inquisition / Iberian Jews
05:28 The Roman Empire / Jews of Judea
06:03 The Great Jewish Revolt / Jewish expulsion
07:14 British Mandatory Palestine / Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi
08:07 Jews of Germany
08:26 The Bar Kochba Revolt / Jews of Judea
12:01 Jews of Jerusalem / The Old Yishuv
12:25 Perushim / Students of the Vilna Gaon
16:10 Jews of Iraq
17:52 The Babylonian Empire
19:04 Jews as a diasporic people
19:43 Where are Jews from?
Excavations reveal decorated floor of Vilna’s Great Synagogue
Excavations of the Great Synagogue of Vilna, Lithuania, destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, have revealed the floor of the main prayer hall, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday. The uncovered sections are decorated with red, black and white flowers.

The unusual dig, which first began last decade, has also uncovered two huge concrete basins under the synagogue’s bathhouse and a Jewish ritual bath, or mikvah, according to the IAA.

The august synagogue, built between 1630-1633, was in continuous use for 300 years until World War II. Constructed in the Renaissance-Baroque style, the large and magnificent synagogue was the oldest and most significant building for Lithuanian Jewry.

During its heyday, the synagogue was surrounded by a complex of other synagogues, ritual baths and community institutions that formed a large center of Torah study and community life—the beating heart of Lithuanian Jewry. Among the buildings in the complex were the community council building, the home of Rabbi Eliyah, aka the Vilna Gaon, the famous “Strashun” library and a bathhouse, according to the IAA.

The synagogue was looted and burned by the Nazis, and its remains were completely destroyed by the Soviet authorities in the 1950s, who built a school on the site.

Over the last decade there have been five excavations carried out at the site in the wake of a ground-penetrating radar survey showing significant remains below the surface, revealing the complex’s rich past.

“The magnificent remains we are discovering—the synagogue Bimah that was uncovered during the previous excavation seasons, as well as the colorful decorations of the floor and walls—bring back moments in the life of a lost vibrant community,” said excavation co-directors Jon Seligman of the IAA and Justinas Rakas of the Lithuanian Archeological Society. “The architectural wealth and vitality we encounter—alongside the destruction of impressive giant columns that collapsed during the destruction of the synagogue by the Nazis and the Soviets, tell the tragic story of a community that lived here, that is no more.”

IAA Director Eli Escusido said that the excavations of the site have taken on added significance this year in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

“In the face of rising anti-Semitism and attempts to deceive and deny, there is one undeniable truth, both simple and tragic, which tells us about an entire magnificent community that was destroyed due to hatred of Jews—Never Again,” he 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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