Thursday, August 01, 2024

08/01 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Israel’s treacherous frenemies; The Ottoman American Empire; In Israel I Heard the Cries of a Determined People

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel’s treacherous frenemies
At the moment that Israel is fighting for its very life, Starmer has decided to side with Israel’s barbaric enemies. Yet his government regularly intones its “support for Israel’s right to self-defense,” just as members of the Biden administration routinely declare that America’s commitment to Israel is “ironclad.”

This is all utter humbug. Astoundingly, the U.S. is going out of its way to protect Iran. Not only has it helped enrich and empower Iran by lifting sanctions; not only does it persistently grovel to Tehran; but the administration has been compromised by clandestine ties to the terrorist regime—ties that also implicate the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Washington Free Beacon has revealed that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) this week wrote to Harris expressing concern over links between her National Security Adviser Philip Gordon and Ariane Tabatabai, chief of staff to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Shortly before the Oct. 7 pogrom, Tabatabei was named as an agent of influence for Iran—at the heart of the U.S. government and with the highest level of security clearance—as part of an “Iran Experts Initiative” created by Iranian officials to bolster Tehran’s position on global security issues within the Beltway.

She had been infiltrated into the U.S. State Department by Robert Malley, who was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was removed in June 2023 following a still unexplained “mishandling of classified materials.”

Gordon, who is likely to play a central national security role in a Harris White House, was the co-author with Tabatabei of at least three opinion pieces that the lawmakers said had been “blatantly promoting the Iranian regime’s perspective and interests,” claiming that sanctions against Iran would create “catastrophe” and cause Tehran to “lash out.”

Cotton and Stefanik also claimed that Gordon was “closely associated with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), another Iranian influence organization that allegedly collaborates with Tehran.”

Yet more explosively still, the two lawmakers added that Amos Hochstein, a senior energy official who has become an unofficial envoy to Lebanon, “allegedly passed intelligence about Israeli airstrikes to Hezbollah potentially as recently as this weekend.”

These astounding claims that the Biden administration has been suborned by Iran seem to have caused barely a ripple in the American media. Instead, like others across the progressive West, they are busily complaining that the assassinations of Shakr and Haniyeh have set back the chances of a ceasefire in Gaza.

In any normal universe, the insistence that a war by Iran aimed at destroying the West is nothing more than a conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza that could be ended by a ceasefire that would give Iran victory would be regarded as evidence of either insanity or treason.

In the Democratic Party and in liberal circles throughout the West, however, it’s mandatory.
Seth Mandel: UK’s ‘Symbolic’ Moves Against Israel Do Real Damage
Elections have consequences, as we’re routinely told. And in the UK, the recent elections have brought about quite the shift in British policy toward Israel.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer got off to a good start when he took over the Labour Party from bitter anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn four years ago. Starmer immediately apologized for the party’s incubation of open Jew-hatred. He sought to cleanse the “stain” of it from Labour and invited the public to judge his results by whether Jews—who abandoned Labour in Corbyn’s general election—would return to the party. It worked, Labour has kept its anti-Semites from the levers of power within the party, and Starmer became prime minister upon Labour’s recent historic wipeout of the Tories.

But now Starmer is leading a shift on Israel policy, and the way in which he is choosing to do so will be a boon to global anti-Semitism. The changes are mostly symbolic, but they illustrate how destructive symbolic actions can be in the realm of foreign affairs.

The first move Starmer’s Britain made was to drop its challenge to the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over Israeli leaders regarding the issuing of arrest warrants. The ICC is deliberating over whether to seek such warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Initially, the UK was to join Germany in filing an objection. But the Conservatives are now out of power and Labour has decided not to pursue it further.

Starmer’s explanation is risible: “I think you would note that the courts have already received a number of submissions on either side, so they are well seized of the arguments to make their independent determinations.” Really? Britain is satisfied to leave up to others the question of whether the Israeli prime minister can visit Britain without fear of arrest?

Whether or not it affects the outcome of the case, if Sir Keir has an objection to the possible arrest of the leader of an allied democracy, that is the sort of thing he should want to go on record with. Perhaps filing that objection is a mostly symbolic act, but not registering such an objection is symbolic of something else—namely, that the prime minister of Israel is a war criminal if a kangaroo court says so. At the very least, the British public might find it alarming that Sir Keir is so bored by the question of British sovereignty.
Tony Badran: The Ottoman American Empire
According to a recent report, the Biden administration “is coalescing around plans for an interim ‘Palestinian Council’ to govern Gaza and a security coalition in which the U.S. military will play a major role.” It’s perhaps a little on the nose, within the scope of the Ottoman analogy, for the United States to set up an “administrative council” for the Palestine mutasarrifate, but there it is. As with the “government of Lebanon,” the point of a council, whether it’s packed with notables or “technocrats,” is to provide cover for the Iranian clients who will continue to wield real power, propping up the American sick man of the Middle East.

In the Lebanese Special Province, the United States has assembled a consultative group with the ambassadors of four other nations (France, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia) to manage the selection of a new “president”—a post that’s been vacant since 2022. The administration’s public pronouncements emphasize the importance of a new “president” for Lebanon. In reality, the administration’s point man on Lebanon, Special Adviser Hochstein, deals with Hezbollah through its ally, Shiite militia leader and “Speaker of Parliament,” Nabih Berri, among other cutouts, like former Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim. The Lebanese government is a facade, an official channel to funnel U.S. aid and to cover for the fact that the administration is dealing as directly as possible with Hezbollah.

In fact, that’s precisely what the administration did in 2022 when it imposed its maritime boundary agreement, which in reality functioned as an official American designation of the Special Province of Lebanon as a U.S. protectorate, thereby discouraging Israeli military operations in that territory. Hochstein, then as now, talked as directly as he could with Hezbollah and advanced Iran’s interests, which he then pressed a client minority prime minister in Israel to accept in their entirety. One measure of the authority of this designation is that Israeli operations in Lebanon still haven’t happened, despite the “loss of sovereignty” declared by the U.S. secretary of state—who apparently gets to declare such things without the Israelis feeling able to say “boo.” Even after the Majdal Shams slaughter, Hochstein reportedly told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that the United States opposed a strike on Beirut.

Intensified U.S. meddling in Israeli domestic affairs as well as the direct interference in Israel’s foreign and security policy since the maritime deal was sealed provide insight into where the state of Israel fits in the Obama-Biden team’s regional architecture alongside the joint U.S.-Iranian special provinces. Israel is a troublesome client, to be managed when possible by the U.S.-aligned Herodian faction inside the country, combined with external pressure like having Israel’s prime minister declared a war criminal by the International Criminal Court.

In the same vein, Washington’s framing of Iran’s April 13 direct missile and drone attack against Israel is instructive. Israel was constrained from retaliating against the Iranians. Instead, the United States made clear that the only legitimate defensive arrangement is one by the American-led integrated regional missile defense, which will effectively calibrate the “hit” that Israel is required to take, while ruling out of bounds any Israeli response to being attacked. That is to say, not only would Israel be denied the autonomous decision-making to go on the offensive, but also, even its defense would be contingent on what the United States deemed acceptable. Accordingly, following Hezbollah’s rocket attack on Majdal Shams, the administration reportedly listed targets in Lebanon that it considers to be out of bounds for Israel, including Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The Obama team sees Jewish sovereignty as a destabilizing factor in the regional arrangement with Iran, which therefore must be constrained, if not outright abolished. To fit in Obama’s “regional integration” vision, Israel has to be reduced to a province, with no sovereign control over its defense policy with regard to the Iranians and their holdings in the U.S.-managed regional architecture, in which you’ll have the subdivision, or kaza, of Gaza and the kaza of the West Bank united within a new mutasarrifate of Palestine. Jerusalem will be a special jurisdiction shared with Israel under international supervision. The Lebanon mutasarrifate will be in the north, and the Israel sanjak (in keeping with Ottoman terminology), minus Jerusalem, in the middle. Within these units, “administrative councils” will be the official governing bodies, which we will refer to as “governments” while actual power resides elsewhere.

In the Lebanon mutasarrifate Hezbollah, as Iran’s local mutasarrif, is the recognized ruler that the United States deals with through the administrative council. In the Palestine mutasarrifate, a council including notables, clans, bedouins, technocrats, and the PA will serve the same function, as Hamas retains its position as the de facto authority and representative of Iran. The U.S. envoy to the Palestine mutasarrifate will manage the former. In the Israel sanjak, a “unity government” and a strong judicial council will serve as the American clients answering to the U.S. proconsul and the security coordinator.

Any 19th-century Ottoman administrator, or French or British Middle East diplomat, would look at a map of these arrangements and smile at how familiar they are. Local rulers and potentates who are not familiar with Ottoman maps and who believe themselves to be the elected leaders of sovereign nations may have a surprise coming, though.


In Israel I Heard the Cries of a Determined People
Americans have largely been spared from war. In a country where only 1% serve and even fewer see combat, almost no one understands that war will always be messy. It's different in Israel, where most serve.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is small but mighty. Its elite units - fighter pilots, special forces, paratroopers - are world class. But it can't withstand a year-long war without relying on its reserves, composed of 465,000 Israelis. Everyone is affected by the war. Two days after my official retirement from the Air Force, I went to Israel to see what it's like when a nation unites behind a war effort, as our country once did.

My tour guide, Nuri, was a young commando who had fought on Oct. 7. As we walked to the site of the Nova Music Festival, I was immediately overwhelmed. I have been to many killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this was different. The unspeakable atrocities on those happy, optimistic young people - not just Jews, but Arabs and others, too - inspired an extra level of grief and anger. Here, 364 people were massacred and 40 more were taken hostage. Most of them were Jews murdered for being Jews, but some were gentiles who were murdered just for being around Jews.

The terrorists, who didn't know about the festival beforehand, marveled at their fortune to descend upon young, helpless Jews celebrating life. And what followed was bloodlust in full array. Men, drunk with violence, luxuriated in massacring Jews. "We came here, and to be honest, all the bad guys were already gone," Nuri told me, "but there were all the bodies. They were everywhere."

The area now bloomed with memorials. There were mourners everywhere. Families weeping by the memorials of their loved ones. But the cries I heard were those of a determined people being reminded that many of their neighbors just really want to kill them.
A town’s anguish over children killed in a soccer field
The pictures of 12 smiling children line the shattered gate of a soccer field, above wreaths of flowers. The blackened remains of bicycles lie next to the bomb shelter the boys and girls were rushing to after a siren went off during their weekend game in this windswept Druze village in the Golan Heights.

“Donated with love for the safety of the People of Israel,” reads a sign on the shelter, pockmarked by the shrapnel from the Iranian-made Hezbollah rocket that struck here on Saturday evening. With a warhead containing over 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives, the blast marked the most lethal attack on northern Israel since the outbreak of the nearly 10-month-old war.

“They heard the sirens and ran towards the shelter, but didn’t make it in time,” said the town’s mayor, Dolan Abu Saleh, on Tuesday. “This is a disaster not just for Majdal Shams but for the whole State of Israel. We will carry this pain for years.”

At the mass funeral for the children in the town on Sunday, some residents pressed Israel to take action against Hezbollah, noting that after the Houthis struck Tel Aviv with a drone earlier this month, Israel hit back as far as Yemen.

On Tuesday evening, Israel killed a top Hezbollah leader in Beirut responsible for the group’s missile, rocket and drone program, in the first such strike against the Iranian-backed Shi’ite terror group in the Lebanese capital since the war broke out.

A town in shock
This generally quiet community, adjacent to Mount Hermon on the strategic plateau, is in a state of collective shock and reflection.

“We are broken and bleeding, but are determined that national resilience will come back,” said Abu Saleh, standing in the stricken soccer pitch.

Black flags fly everywhere in the village. The square adjacent to the soccer field now features a dozen chairs, a soccer ball on each, as well as a white T-shirt with the first name of each of the young victims. Above the chairs is a photomontage of the 12.
Our son has been held captive by Hamas for 300 days
It’s been 300 days since Hamas terrorists abducted our son, Omer, an IDF first responder, who rushed to protect the residential villages near the Gaza border in southern Israel. That’s 300 days of marching, chanting, protesting and speaking out on his behalf. For nearly a year, my husband and I have worn his beautiful face on our T-shirts calling on someone, anyone to Bring Them Home Now. It was a sprint that has turned into a marathon since that awful day — Oct. 7, 2023.

Our family has been living a prolonged terrorist attack ever since.

My son Omer was born in New York City one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. I was in Manhattan that day and clearly remember trying to get myself and my unborn child to safety. With public transportation at a standstill, I trekked by foot over the Queensboro Bridge towards our home in Rego Park.

What happened on 9/11 was unimaginable, and yet it happened . . . the streets after the attack were filled with posters of missing persons. The city was in trauma. In my worst dreams I couldn’t have imagined living through yet another terrorist attack — one that drags on for nearly a year — with no sign of life from my 22-year-old son, his smiling eyes looking out at me from posters on the streets.

We are just a regular family from Plainview, Long Island. My husband and I own a small business, we have a second son, Daniel, two and half years younger than Omer. We are private and not very political, and yet we find ourselves caught up in the middle of the most controversial geopolitical war in decades. Our life as we knew it, is gone. The same is true for the families of seven other American hostages being held against their will in Gaza.

As I wake up every morning, I pray that Omer, too, is waking up; that he is strong and is surviving. But at the same time, I also ask myself, “what am I doing today to release Omer?”

This line of questioning has driven Omer’s father and myself to places we could never imagine. Two weeks ago, we addressed the Republican National Convention. “Omer, which is a biblical name that means . . . the first crop, is our firstborn,” I told the crowd in Milwaukee. Last week, we sat in the White House Cabinet room, speaking to President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The day before, we visited the Pentagon, meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. After that, we sat in the gallery of the US House of Representatives, watching Netanyahu address Congress and the nation, hoping against hope that he would announce our son was coming home.

We pray as though everything depends on God, but we act as though the outcome depends on our actions. So far, no success.

This is a global humanitarian crisis, affecting 115 hostage-citizens from over 20 countries, their families and the Israeli soldiers battling to find them and bring them back, not to mention all the Palestinians in Gaza who are suffering. And yet, we are challenged on a daily basis to find a way to tell the story of our loved ones as the media lurches from one crisis to the next. So, we are forced to become diplomats, making sure to keep our plight apolitical in an election year when every breath you take becomes political and potentially life-threatening.


Wikipedia Editors Title Article “Gaza Genocide”
Wikipedia editors have officially renamed an article that was titled “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” to “Gaza genocide” following a discussion that lasted for a couple months.

The discussion, known in wiki-parlance as a “Requested move” (RM), started on May 3, when it was suggested that “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” was no longer a sufficient description since Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has continued well into 2024. Three options were proposed: 1) “Gaza genocide question,” 2) “Gaza genocide accusation,” and 3) “Gaza genocide.” The discussion centered around whether or not “Gaza genocide” is the most common term used in reliable sources and if it should follow other similarly titled Wikipedia articles; editors sparred over whether or not there is a scholarly consensus that Israel’s actions in Gaza are tantamount to genocide. A comprehensive source survey was conducted to determine where various scholars and experts stand on the matter, which can be found on the top of the article’s talk page where it states “scholarly and expert opinions (to be extended),” though other sources have been added to the list following the RM discussion.

Editors in favor of the “Gaza genocide” title argued that the sources show there is a scholarly consensus on the matter, as their arguments included citations to articles in the Journal of Genocide Research, a Holocaust historian claiming there is consensus among genocide scholars and an international human rights professor claiming there’s consensus in the human rights legal community worldwide as well as “many other legal and political experts, including many Holocaust scholars.” A Brookings Institute poll concluding that “a third of [Middle East] scholars see Israel’s military actions in Gaza as ‘genocide’” and 41% view that Israel’s actions as being “major war crimes akin to genocide” was also cited. Editors in favor of the “Gaza genocide” title also contended that there are plenty of examples of Wikipedia articles like “Extraterrestrial life” where the article does not state that the title itself is true, and that regardless of if there’s academic consensus, “Gaza genocide” should be the title since it’s the most common term used in reliable sources. They further argued it would be consistent with articles like “Tamil genocide” (referencing Sri Lanka’s Tamil population) and “Transgender genocide” that are “much less academically certain” than “Gaza genocide.” Editors against the title opined that other “questionably titled articles” are “appropriately qualified in the lead” or should be renamed altogether and that there’s enough sources documenting pushback to the allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza that titling it as such would violate Wikipedia’s policy barring non-neutral titles (WP:POVTITLE). Further, editors against the “Gaza genocide” title argued that the other two options would be better reflect the article’s scope as a matter of debate. The article begins by stating that Israel faces allegations of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

In this RM, editors put in their “!votes” where they argue which title best reflects site policy, and a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) rendered a verdict based on the numbers and strength of the arguments presented. The closer here was Joe Roe, who according to his user page is a computational archaeologist at the University of Bern; he concluded that there was “rough consensus” for the “Gaza genocide” title.


Visegrad24: Ex-Muslim On The West's Decline - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan is a Somali-born, Dutch-American writer, activist and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation.

While growing up her family moved across various countries in Africa and the Middle East, and at 23, she received political asylum in the Netherlands,

In her early 30s, she renounced the Islamic faith of her childhood, began identifying as an atheist, and became involved in Dutch centre-right politics, becoming an MP of the VVD party.

While serving in parliament, she collaborated on a short film with Theo van Gogh, titled Submission, which depicted the oppression of women under fundamentalist Islamic law. Van Gogh was murdered shortly after the film's release by an Islamist terrorist, driving Ayaan into hiding.

Moving to the United States, she established herself as a writer and public intellectual. In 2005, Time magazine named Ali as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Her books Infidel: My Life (2007), Nomad: From Islam to America (2010) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015) became bestsellers.

Ali was a central figure in New Atheism since its beginnings. She was strongly associated with the movement, along with Christopher Hitchens, who regarded Ali as "the most important public intellectual ever to come out of Africa".

In 2023, Ali announced her conversion to the Christian faith, claiming that in her view the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only answer to the problems of the modern world.

Ali is married to Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson. The couple are raising their sons in the United States, where she became a citizen in 2013.

The video was recorded in cooperation with Influencers for Peace.

00:00 - Introduction
00:43 - Tribes & Nations
03:14 - The Culture War in the West
06:57 - Subverting Western Civilization
11:34 - Lessons from WW2 and the Cold War
15:23 - Fighting Evil Today
17:54 - Virtue-Signalling & the Woke Mind Virus
25:46 - Secularization & and the Woke Mind Virus
29:04 - Ibrahim X. Kendi & Robin DiAngelo
31:12 - Standing up to Wokeism
35:23 - Rise and fall of civilizations
36:56 - Cultural Relativism
41:00 - Restoration Bulletin
41:25 - Yuri Bezmenov


DC suburb resisted removing anti-Israel encampment outside Blinken home
The recent removal of a sprawling protest encampment situated for six months outside Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s home in Northern Virginia is facing a last-ditch legal challenge from some organizers of the anti-Israel demonstration, which was cleared by state authorities on Friday.

A group of leading protesters on Tuesday filed a motion in Arlington Circuit Court to schedule an “expedited hearing” on a request for an injunction to block the removal of the encampment, even as it had already been dismantled.

The organizers — Hazami Barmada, Michael A. Beer, Corey Walden, and Nadia McGeough — are alleging “ongoing violations of their constitutional rights” and claim that the encampment was cleared before an effort to seek injunctive relief was heard by a judge, according to the new motion shared with Jewish Insider by their attorney, Sam Burgan, on Wednesday.

“The state decided to abuse its power, acted in bad faith and moved with its raid while the matter was still pending a hearing, testimony and a finding” by a judge,” he wrote in an email to JI.

But it remains to be seen if the new legal effort will gain traction after state law enforcement stepped in amid mounting backlash to Arlington authorities for allowing the encampment, where protesters were calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, to remain in place for half a year, despite what was deemed an unlawful threat to public safety.

Behind the scenes, the Anti-Defamation League had lobbied aggressively for months to urge the removal of the protest encampment, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke with JI on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

“They were worse than useless,” the person said of Arlington law enforcement, which has been accused of enabling the protesters as the encampment grew. “Their lack of support emboldened the lunatics.”
House Threatens To Subpoena Columbia for Messages From Dean at Center of Anti-Semitic Texting Scandal
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is threatening to subpoena Columbia University should the school refuse to provide internal communications on campus anti-Semitism from Josef Sorett, the dean at the center of the texting scandal that has rocked the Ivy League institution, as well as other university leaders.

The committee's chairwoman, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), leveled the threat in a Thursday letter sent to Columbia president Minouche Shafik and the co-chairs of the school's board of trustees, David Greenwald and Claire Shipman.

"The Committee on Education and the Workforce is continuing to investigate Columbia University's response to the severe and pervasive antisemitism on its campus," Foxx wrote. "Despite repeated requests, Columbia has failed to produce priority items requested by the Committee."

Those items, Foxx wrote, include "communications by priority custodians of documents, including multiple members of Columbia's Board of Trustees," records from board meetings, and "requested information on disciplinary cases." Foxx specifically requested "all documents and communications since October 7, 2023, referring and relating to antisemitism" from Sorett and other top Columbia officials, including Shafik, Greenwald, and Shipman.

"In many cases," Foxx continued, "these items were requested months ago. Columbia's continued failure to produce these priority items is unacceptable, and if this is not promptly rectified, the Committee is prepared to compel their production."

The announcement marks a significant escalation in the committee’s investigation into the university.

The committee launched that probe months ago, sending a letter to Shafik in February that requested documents "related to conduct involving the targeting of Jews, Israelis, Israel, Zionists, or Zionism." Columbia "has failed to produce" those documents "despite repeated requests," prompting the subpoena threat, Foxx said in a Thursday press release.

"We have received the Chairwoman's letter and we are reviewing it," a Columbia spokeswoman said. "We are committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of hate."
House Republicans question UC San Francisco over ‘antisemitic harassment and intimidation’
Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised concerns on Wednesday about “antisemitic harassment and intimidation” at the University of California San Francisco and its health facilities, threatening to revoke federal funding from the institution.

In a letter to UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who chair subcommittees, suggested that Congress could pull UCSF and UCSF Health’s federal health care and scientific research funding if they don’t comply with federal civil rights laws.

“Failing to comply with basic safety protections for members of the UCSF and UCSF Health communities or failure to respond appropriately to and prevent harassment and discrimination, no matter the cause, may be grounds to withhold federal funds from the university and its associated medical centers,” the three House members said.

The lawmakers said that an encampment outside a UCSF Health facility, which they said features pro-terrorism signs and symbols, “has caused significant disturbance to campus and health care operations, as well as great distress for members of the community, including health care professionals and patients,” who can hear antisemitic chants from their rooms.

At the school’s Mission Bay Campus, the path into a cancer treatment center is marred by antisemitic graffiti, the lawmakers added, making Jewish patients feel “unsafe or uncomfortable with coming in for treatment.”

The lawmakers said that Jewish health-care providers also feel unsafe coming into work, a concern the lawmakers called “well founded, as there have been numerous antisemitic public statements by faculty, staff, and students at UCSF and/or UCSF Health.”

The letter further warns UCSF, which has a large health-focused graduate school, that it “must not allow antisemitism to permeate its medical school and infect medical students whose patients from all ancestral and faith backgrounds will rely on UCSF for treatment and care.”

The lawmakers alleged that hundreds of antisemitic discrimination and hostility complaints have been filed with various UCSF offices, which the lawmakers said have been largely dismissed. They also alleged that UCSF health-care employees have repeatedly violated UCSF Health’s code of conduct.
'BRUTALIZE,' 'ESCALATE': CUNY anti-Israel group threatens violence against NYC and police officers
An anti-Israel student group at the City University of New York posted a statement seemingly calling for the dismantling of the university and appearing to urge violence against New York City and the police.

The July 25 statement was published by CUNY for Palestine, a group that describes itself as “a network of CUNY students and workers organizing for Palestinian liberation on campus.”

“We are an autonomous group of students, faculty, community members and outside agitators who chose to disrupt the encampment’s status quo in order to dismantle CUNY’s active role in this genocide and ongoing apartheid,” the authors of the statement explain.

The document, which repeatedly refers to police officers as “pigs,” attacked the police for cracking down on disruptive anti-Israel protests, and appeared to support violent attacks on law enforcement and New York City itself: “The City of New York and their pigs continue to escalate their repression of the city. . . . The city of New York and their pigs are going to keep brutalizing and escalating, and so will we.”

The anti-Israel activists also warned that “Anyone that chooses to play the role of a pig is the enemy.”

“As the zionist entity continues its destruction of the Gaza Strip—and the United States maintains its genocidal hegemony from Palestine to Harlem—the working class people of the world escalate,” the group argued.

Although the group claimed that the takeover of university buildings by “students and outside agitators” can “draw attention to injustices and force institutions to address the demands of protestors,” it stated that the anti-Israel encampments that proliferated on college and university campuses did not go far enough.

CUNY for Palestine seemed instead to suggest that CUNY and other universities should be destroyed entirely.

“The encampments were an escalatory response, but they often failed to envision an end goal beyond a meeting, a committee or an email,” the statement continued. An encampment should not normalize the institution, it should disrupt it, dismantle it and abolish it. A principled encampment should not collaborate with the pigs.” [Emphasis in original.]
Florida student uses fake emails, AI-generated voicemail to fake suspension for anti-Israel activism
Santa Fe College student Charly Keanu Pringle, who was arrested at an anti-Israel protest at the University of Florida earlier this year, has falsely claimed to have been suspended from her school as punishment for participating in the demonstration.

Santa Fe College is a public college that, like the University of Florida, is located in Gainesville, Florida. Pringle, however, had not actually been enrolled at the school since spring of last year.

Pringle reportedly created fraudulent emails and a voicemail with artificial intelligence to sound like a Santa Fe College official in an attempt to confirm her fake suspension.

The administrator later confirmed that, though the voicemail was made to sound like his voice, it was not actually sent by him. “Oh, that’s bad,” he said. “That’s bad.”

While some Florida students were suspended for up to four years for their involvement in anti-Israel demonstrations, Santa Fe Associate Vice President for Student Conduct Dan Rodkin and Spokesperson Lisa Brosky have confirmed Pringle was never suspended by the college.

Pringle currently faces a criminal charge for resisting an officer for her conduct during a pro-Palestinian protest at UF in April.

UF suspended five students who were arrested at an anti-Israel campus protest on April 29.

“This is not complicated. The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children — they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences,” a UF official said at the time.
NY Republican demands Columbia University repay $200K in NYPD overtime for anti-Israel encampment
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) demanded that Columbia University repay at least $200,000 in overtime costs to the New York Police Department related to anti-Israel encampments in the spring.

D’Esposito, a former NYPD detective, wrote in a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafi that taxpayers shouldn’t be the ones paying for increased security of her campus, according to the New York Post.

“The University, under your leadership, is at fault for allowing chaos to spread to the point where pro-terror students disrupted the functioning of the University, instilled fear in Jewish and Israeli students, held custodians hostage, and inflicted violence, and the NYPD and taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for your failure,” D’Esposito wrote.

“After all the damage these pro-terror riots and encampments have caused under your watch, to students, faculty, surrounding communities, and public servants, it is time you do the right thing by making amends to all those affected,” the New York Republican said.

According to D’Esposito, the NYPD “allocated $200,000 in overtime pay to cover this operation,” adding that is “no small number and has negative implications to the operations of the Department.”

D’Esposito was among the group of House Republicans that visited Columbia University during the anti-Israel encampment.


BBC chairman accused of dismissing staff complaints of anti-Semitism
“Jews don’t count” at the BBC, staff have warned as part of a complaint about “systemic anti-Semitism”.

More than 200 staff, contractors, suppliers and contributors wrote to the board and Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, demanding “an urgent formal investigation” into what is described as “anti-Jewish racism”.

The letter includes details of when Jewish staff have experienced “prejudice and racism at work” and says that there is “a loss of faith in the BBC within our community and a widespread opinion that, when it comes to racism and discrimination at the BBC, “Jews don’t count”.

If other minorities were treated in the same way the corporation would “show zero tolerance”, the letter alleges.

The calls for an investigation have been “dismissed” by Mr Shah, who in response praised the “inclusive” culture at the corporation and pointed to the whistleblower process.

His response has led to claims of “gaslighting”, with signatory Neil Grant, a Bafta-award-winning executive producer, noting: “When Jews tell you they feel anti Semitism, don’t question it or define it for us.”

After Mr Shah’s letter an employee, speaking anonymously, noted: “Every week it gets a little harder being a Jew at the BBC.

“Harder to sit in the office and listen to colleagues discussing their very personal views about the war in Gaza and attacks by Hezbollah on northern Israel, harder listening, watching and reading the loaded output about events in the Middle East and colleagues’ partial and often offensive social media posts, and harder to go home at night and speak to friends and family who hold me responsible for the BBC contributing to the rise in anti-Semitism in the UK because I am an employee and so guilty by association.”

The row emerged just days after the Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote to Sky News accusing correspondent Alex Crawford of a “disgraceful lack of professionalism” over a piece in which she said that Israel has a “lust for revenge” .


Illegal Jordanian migrants who ‘tried to breach’ Quantico base allowed to walk free after posting bail
The two illegal Jordanian migrants who are charged with trying to breach Marine Corps Base Quantico in May posted thousands of dollars in bail and were allowed to leave federal custody, The Post can exclusively reveal.

Hasan Yousef Hamdan, 32, and Mohammad Khair Dabous, 28, were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention despite their immigration status — Hamdan had crossed into the country illegally in April and Dabous had overstayed his student visa and is subject to removal proceedings, law enforcement sources told The Post.

They were arrested on May 3 for trespassing onto the military installation and handed over to ICE officers because of their immigration statuses.

It’s still unknown why the men allegedly tried to get onto the base.

The site is home to the FBI Academy and FBI Laboratory, as well as a Defense Intelligence Agency facility and several major US Marine Corps commands — including the unit that flies the Marine One presidential helicopter.

“Big-time intel failure, security failure,” a federal law enforcement source told The Post.

“If it wasn’t an act of terrorism, why aren’t the government officials releasing the details of this? What was the intent?”

The men both posted bond in their ICE cases — with Hamdan’s set at $15,000 and Dabous’ set at $10,000 — and were released in early June, according to federal law enforcement sources.

Hamdan and Dabous were charged with misdemeanor trespassing on military property and appeared before a judge for the first time on July 22, when they were ordered released on the conditions that they show up to court for their immigration proceedings and stay away from Quantico or other military bases, according to the court documents, which were first reported by Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Federal prosecutors supported their releases on those conditions, according to the court documents.

Hamdan entered the US illegally via the southern border in San Diego in April, when he was released due to a lack of detention space, federal law enforcement sources told The Post.

Dabous was in the US illegally after overstaying his student visa, sources said.


Swiss ski store fined over antisemitic discrimination
A restaurant manager in the Swiss ski resort of Davos has been fined for refusing to rent sports equipment to Jews, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The manager was sentenced to a fine and a suspended fine for “discrimination by refusing to provide services on the grounds of race, ethnicity or religion,” the office of the southeastern Graubunden canton’s public prosecutor told AFP.

In February, the 20 Minuten newspaper published a picture of a sign put up at the plush Pischa station above Davos, the resort known for hosting the annual World Economic Forum of the globe’s business and political elites.

The sign, in Hebrew, said that because of various incidents, “including the theft of a sled, we no longer rent sports equipment to our Jewish brothers.”

The policy applied to all winter sports equipment including sleds, airboards and snowshoes, it said, ending with “thank you for your understanding.”

20 Minuten said the restaurant had told the paper in a written statement that they “no longer want the daily hassle” of Jewish guests leaving sleds on the slopes, or equipment not being returned or “returned defective.”

Following a media storm in Switzerland, the restaurant manager apologized and reversed the decision.

The size of the fine was not announced, and as the man in question did not appeal, the case did not go to court.

“The penal order is final. We will not provide any further details on the sanction,” the prosecutor’s office said.

The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities filed the legal complaint.

“We are pleased that the public prosecutor’s office acted quickly and consistently,” its general secretary Jonathan Kreutner told AFP.


Israeli judokas Inbar Lanir, Peter Paltchik win silver, bronze medals at Paris Games
Israeli judokas Inbar Lanir and Peter Paltchik won silver and bronze medals, respectively, at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Thursday, the country’s first medals of the 2024 Games.

Lanir, 24, took home the silver after losing to Italy’s Alice Bellandi in the final match of the women’s under-78kg weight class.

Earlier, she beat Mongolia’s Otgonbayaryn Khüslen in the round of 16, then took down the Netherlands’ Guusje Steenhuis in the round of 16 with an ippon in just 23 seconds, before defeating Germany’s Anna-Maria Wagner in the semifinal match.

Her win marks the second-ever Olympic silver for Israel, its eighth in judo and the 15th overall Olympic medal for the Jewish state.

Minutes after winning the silver, Lanir told Israel’s Sport5 broadcaster: “I’m so, so happy right now.”

“It’s a bit hard to be happy after losing in the final because I always want to beat everyone, but I’m really happy,” she said. “The fact that I have the privilege to give a little happy news during this time is worth everything to me.”

Asked about wearing a bright yellow scrunchie in her hair — the color of pins calling for the return of the hostages held in Gaza — Lanir said “of course” it had meaning: “Those who understand it, will understand.”

The judoka said that “since the start of the war, my stomach has been in knots. I knew that the one thing I could do is keep training and doing what I’m best at because I have the privilege to represent the country and to raise the flag around the world — and that gave me huge motivation.”

Her yellow hair scrunchie, Lanir said, “is to show that I’m thinking about them today too,” apparently referencing hostages held in Gaza.

Silver medalist Israel’s Inbar Lanir celebrates after the podium of the judo women’s -78kg at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Champ-de-Mars Arena, in Paris on August 1, 2024. (Luis ROBAYO / AFP) Paltchik, meanwhile, won the bronze medal after defeating Switzerland’s Daniel Eich in the men’s under-100kg weight class.




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