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Saturday, August 03, 2024

08/03 Links: Israel has shown it can still hit back – and now the world can sleep safer; Mossad hired IRGC agents bomb Haniyeh; The UN is at war against women

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Israel has shown it can still hit back – and now the world can sleep safer
Every one of the troubles affecting Israel at present originate in Iran. It is the Revolutionary Islamic government there that has made the eradication of Israel a priority. It is Iran that is ensuring that Israel is fighting a war on – effectively – seven fronts. Not just against Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Iran but against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen among many others.

After the October 7 attacks – again funded and backed by Iran – the regime in Tehran looked on with satisfaction as the world turned not on Hamas but on Israel. The regime delighted in the useful idiots and others in the West turning against Israel rather than on the terrorists of Hamas. The Supreme Leader – Ayatollah Khamenei – even expressed his public gratitude and support for students at American universities who were bringing their institutions to a halt as a protest against Israel’s right to defend itself.

How much happier they must have been in recent months as the preposterous nobodies at the so-called International Criminal Court declared that they were seeking arrest warrants for the democratically elected prime minister of Israel – Benjamin Netanyahu – and his defence minister. Oh and also for two of the leaders of Hamas. Since the ICC has no evidence of war crimes committed by the Israelis it has announced the warrants ahead of any investigation. A novel concept: to announce an arrest and then start looking for a crime. Though it is hardly surprising given the illegitimate nature of the court and the wild politicisation that has predictably occurred in it.

So where will the rest of Israel’s allies be now?

In the US Kamala Harris is busily trying to boast to her base that she is being “tough” on the Israelis. There is little evidence that she intends to be even equally “tough” on Iran. And in the UK our new government has not only acceded to the preposterous ICC (and good luck David Lammy when your time for arrest comes), it has also repeatedly criticised the Israeli government.

It is the wrong time to do either. For the sake of peace in the Middle East it is necessary for Iran’s terrorist chiefs to be hunted down. And if the British government wanted to do something meaningful for once, perhaps instead of grandstanding it could finally round up the regime operatives here in Britain? I wonder if they will.
Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer: Israel Reestablished Deterrence. It Should be Praised, Not Admonished
There are those who now insist that the elimination of Haniyeh and Shukr will only escalate regional tensions. To them we ask: Where have you been the last 10 months?

Hamas initiated the massacre of October 7 and were joined by Hezbollah the day after, having since fired over 7,250 rockets at northern Israel from Lebanon.

Iran has meantime been pulling the strings from Tehran as the grandmaster of both Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the Houthis, who joined long ago from Yemen.

If anyone has been escalating regional tensions, it has been the international community, which has been largely trying to pressure Israel into showing restraint or compromise, instead of demanding Hezbollah and Hamas, cease the attacks, disarm and release all the hostages, or that Iran reign in their proxies.

In doing so, the international community has only emboldened these terror groups and encouraged their regional patrons to escalate tensions further.

If anything, the world should thank Israel now, as the elimination of Haniyeh and Shukr ought to send a clear message to all the terror groups and their enablers that their actions come at a heavy price, and they should reconsider their involvement.

Israel's renewed deterrence can also have a positive impact on the hostage negotiations. Although there will be some uncertainty with respect to the negotiations in the short-term, in the medium term, it should place greater pressure on Hamas to accept a deal.

There is no denying that Hamas has been utterly decimated and embarrassed. Their leadership is destroyed, its military dismantled into a fraction of its former self, and Sinwar has never been so isolated. Although Hamas is unlikely to re-engage in negotiations so soon for fear of losing face and being seen as succumbing to Israel's overpowering, they will need to reach some kind of agreement, so as to have at least something to show and avoid the fate of Haniyeh and Deif.

Israel's audacious targeted operations this past week only underscore that the path to stability in the region and return of the hostages, will come from renewed Israeli deterrence and strength.
Crying with the mourners in Majdal Shams
The men and women separated, waiting on lines to comfort the mourners. The bleachers of the stadium-like hall were packed. Large pictures of each murdered child sat on chairs. Each child’s mother sat directly behind the poster of her child.

It was crushing. Devastating. And it seemed that the oxygen had been sucked from the room.

Tears streaming, bereft of words, we offered gestures, sentiments, and the anguish in our hearts for the few seconds we had with each mother before the line pushed us forward. They responded, some crying, others in shock, some simply numb. They thanked us for coming and being with them.

Most of the people in the room were Druze, but there were other Jewish Israelis, and some Muslims as well, who had come to grieve with the community. We climbed the rows to sit in seats and just be with them in their time of pain.

Messages kept coming into my phone. “There are sirens and falls very close to you. Someone was just killed.”

I felt terrible worrying people, but being there was the right thing for me.

Knowing that I had no GPS, I asked Esther and Ilanit, two women who had come from their moshav in the Golan if I could follow them out, understanding that I would have to traverse the Golan south to return home, instead of taking the route west, through the Galilee, which was literally on fire. The rockets that had killed Nir Popko, 28, from Kibbutz HaGoshrim had started fires across the Galilee.

By now, we were a group. We met up with the men outside, drank more coffee, and were told by Rim and Mahmud that before leaving, we would come to their home and refresh ourselves.

Their home sits at the top of the hill, with a gorgeous view of Mount Hermon and the entire village. It is beautiful, spotless, warm and very homey. From the outside porch, Mahmud shows us the playground and soccer field where the rocket fell — in the center of the town — and where he was when he heard it. I spoke with Rim as she made the coffee and marveled at the woman who could have white carpeting in her kitchen — with not one spot on it!

Over coffee, wafers, and fruit, we heard about how Mahmud built his home (his brothers live on the floors below) and how he built a home for Shmuel, another Golan resident who joined our group and helped my father and Harris (who don’t speak Hebrew) navigate the men’s section.

I looked around the room as we chatted. Three Jewish Israelis from the Golan, a Druze couple, myself, my dad, and Harris, all family for the day… and perhaps beyond.

With a three-hour drive ahead of me, I reluctantly said we needed to get on our way. Rim, and then Mahmud, invited us to sleep over, but I had worried my family members enough for one day. I did promise that I would come back, God willing, after the war was over, to accept their hospitality.

Leaving was hard. I felt attached to the people I had met, the community I had discovered — and I knew it would be some time before we could return. In the western sky, a massive plume of cloud and smoke stretched eastward. The stench of fire was strong.

We followed Shmuel, Esther, and Ilanit down the Golan, past the massive wind turbines, old bunkers, and vast fields. Shmuel stopped to show us the border with Syria, a stone’s throw from the road we drove on, and then escorted us all the way to the Sea of Galilee, where he called to give us directions for the rest of the way, and invited us to return and visit them in their homes and see the Golan without war. Then, they turned left and we went right.

As I drove, I thought about the phone call that morning. She asked if I knew someone in Majdal Shams. I didn’t then. I do now.


Caroline Glick: Israelis accept breach with Biden, Harris
The total disconnect between Israeli determination to see the war through to victory and the Biden-Harris administration’s total opposition to Israeli victory against Iran or any of its proxy forces has not escaped the attention of most Israelis. They are increasingly rallying around their government, and particularly, Netanyahu, as they see him standing up less to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and more to the administration, pursuing victory in the face of American opposition.

The more Biden, Harris and their advisers harass Israel—the more they accuse Israel of “escalating” the war—the less Israelis listen to them. Whereas Israelis greeted Biden’s decision after Oct. 7 to deploy two carrier groups to the region with relief, seeing it as a testament to his commitment to Israel’s survival and security, the administration’s announcement that it is deploying naval assets back to the Eastern Mediterranean is being met with skepticism. Israelis question whether the deployment is geared towards supporting Israel or preventing it from degrading Hezbollah’s capacity to wage war against Israel.

Israeli media coverage of the U.S. presidential race drips with dread. As Harris rises in polls, it is dawning on Israeli leaders, warfighters and the general citizenry that if she wins, the current dismal state of U.S.-Israel relations is likely to be the best that they can expect from Washington going forward.

Israel resisted acknowledging the administration’s hostility to its determination to win the war for as long as it could. Leading politicians used Biden’s obvious hostility towards Netanyahu as a means to attack Netanyahu, whom they accused of undermining U.S.-Israel relations. After Netanyahu received 51 standing ovations from Congress, even Netanyahu’s opponents are being forced to admit that he isn’t the problem. Biden’s hostility to Israeli victory is the problem. Netanyahu’s determination to win, despite Biden’s opposition, is widely perceived as the only reason that Israel is still in the fight.

The long-term consequence of Israel’s awakening to the reality of the leadership of the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israeli power and even survival is already beginning to show. Israelis are less interested in U.S. opinion than they were until recently. They are more determined to end Israel’s strategic dependence on U.S. military assistance and munitions. And they are more willing to stand up for themselves when challenged by “friends” abroad.

This shift does not mean that Israelis no longer admire and even love the United States. It means that Israelis are beginning to wake up to the necessity—76 years after achieving independence—for their nation to be strategically independent. Whoever is in power in the United States, that attitude and determination can only have a positive impact on the alliance in the coming years.
Jonathan Tobin: Israel shouldn’t ‘help’ Biden-Harris appease Iran
It is true that there is widespread doubt about American leadership right now. But that has nothing to do with what Netanyahu does or doesn’t do. With a president so feeble that he was forced to end his re-election campaign weeks before his party was about to renominate him and an equally weak-willed replacement like Harris now standing in for him, it’s little wonder that the international community cannot trust or rely on the United States to play a coherent, let alone a decisive, role on the world stage.

That didn’t begin with Biden’s obvious decline in the last year. From the moment he took office in January 2021, his foreign policy was one that inspired contempt among America’s foes and concern on the part of its allies. His feckless pursuit of another round of appeasement of Iran, and then the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, marked his presidency as one whose hallmark was defeat and disgrace—something that directly led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and ultimately, to Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel.

Since then, the American policy has been to slow-walk aid to Israel in such a manner as to force it to give up its justified quest to remove Hamas from control of Gaza. While the administration is willing to help defend Israel against attacks from Iran, the price it wants Israel to pay for that assistance is to do little or nothing to pre-empt future assaults. Were Netanyahu to comply—both by agreeing to the humiliating ceasefire terms outlined by Harris and by ending all efforts to substantially harm the terrorist groups by killing the criminals that lead them—it would make life easier for Washington and, no doubt, aid Harris’s election campaign. But it would also substantially damage its security while also enhancing Iran’s quest to gain regional hegemony. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that, to Jerusalem’s consternation, the administration has essentially conceded that it will not prevent Tehran from achieving its nuclear ambitions—something that is an existential threat to Israel as well as a terrible blow to U.S. and Western interests.

Doing America’s dirty work
There is genuine uncertainty about what will happen in the coming days, weeks and months until November, and then the inauguration of a new American president next January. Still, the assumption that an assertion of Israeli strength and a demonstration of Iran’s inability to protect its terrorist minions will make the world more dangerous is misguided. The more the Islamist foes of the West and Israel fear for their lives, the more likely it is that they will be deterred from further mayhem, allowing both Israelis and Americans to be safer. By killing Fukr, Deif and Haniyeh—and giving the mullahs in Tehran reason to worry about their own security—Israel was defending its people against Islamist murderers and doing a job that Americans needed done, whether or not it served the political and policy interests of Biden or Harris.

While Israeli leaders must always seek to stay as close as they can to their American counterparts, that is an impossible task for Netanyahu right now and one that could harm his own country’s security. As long as American policy is dedicated to appeasing the mullahs in Tehran and propping up their terrorist allies, coupled with a leadership vacuum in Washington, Israel cannot just sit back and watch as its enemies grow more powerful and bolder in their efforts to kill Jews.

It isn’t Netanyahu’s job to bolster an American administration that is determined to project weakness rather than strength. If America now appears weak or not in control, the blame rests on Biden, Harris and their Washington cheerleaders. Rather than attacking Netanyahu for doing his job, Americans who care about their country’s security should be cheering Israel for doing what a failed administration either won’t or cannot do.
How the Biden/Harris Policies Are Endangering Israel
The Middle East has always been a complicated place to understand. American policy in the region, however, has usually been somewhat uniform and coherent…until recently, that is.

In this episode of “Think Twice,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin tries to make sense of the Biden/Harris strategy with Middle East expert Michael Doran.

They discuss everything from America’s policy towards Iran and its proxies to Biden’s tenuous relationship with the Jewish state; the Gaza war and attempts to reach an agreement; the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy; and what U.S. foreign policy might look like under a Harris or Trump administration.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:31 Tobin's Take: What's the endgame of the Biden-Harris Administration's Middle East Policy?
07:18 Interview: Michael Doran
08:19 Biden-Harris Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas Policy
18:14 The Limitations of the Two-State Solution
49:19 The Future of American Foreign Policy


Iran plans to attack Israel on Tisha B’Av - the Jewish day of disasters, Western intelligence says
Western intelligence sources told Sky News Arabia that they had evidence Iran plans to attack Israel on Tisha B’Av in response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which begins on August 12 and ends on August 13, the site reported on Friday.

Iran’s attack will reportedly be coordinated with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terror group embedded in Lebanon.

On Tisha B’Av, Jews lament the destruction of the first and second Temples. During the annual event, there is fasting, mourning and a practice of self-denial.

Three sources told the New York Times that Iran planned to respond to the assassination of Haniyeh. The sentiment was echoed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameini on X who wrote “Following this bitter, tragic event which has taken place within the borders of the Islamic Republic, it is our duty to take revenge.”

The report indicates that there is an emotional and psychological impact in targeting Israel on the holy day of mourning.

The report claimed that Jewish Israelis may feel particularly vulnerable on this day - adding an additional layer of psychological torment.


Full list: Iberia Express, Air Europa are latest airlines suspending Tel Aviv route
Spanish airlines Iberia and Air Europa canceled upcoming flights to Israel Saturday, joining a fast-growing list of carriers to suspend the route or cancel some flights as Israel remains braced for a large-scale attack by Iran and Hezbollah, amid fears of an escalating regional conflict.

Iberia Express canceled flights to and from Tel Aviv until Monday. Air Europa’s daily flights to and from Israel are canceled from Sunday to Wednesday, though an outbound flight to Madrid would proceed as planned Saturday.

The cancellations have left some 100,000 Israelis stranded abroad, Channel 12 reported, citing sources in the aviation industry. According to the report, people stuck overseas are advised to travel to Greece or Cyprus and catch a flight from there back to Israel.

National carrier El Al has not seen any disruptions to its schedule. Channel 12 news reported Saturday night that it was adding five flights to help bring home Israelis stranded overseas.
Elbit gets contract to build massive munitions factory
The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced the award of a 10-year, $340 million (1.5 billion shekel) contract to Haifa-based Elbit Systems Ltd. on Thursday to build and operate a state-of-the-art munitions factory.

The contract is of strategic importance for the Jewish state’s military autonomy in the face of slowdowns and stoppages of arms exports from Western countries to Israel.

The Biden administration has been slowing down the export of certain munitions to Israel, and other Western countries, such as Canada, announced that they are stopping the sale of arms to Israel altogether, with Britain about to follow suit.

The Defense Ministry said the contract is meant “to ensure a steady supply of critical materials for the IDF’s strength and longevity during ongoing and future operations.”

Elbit Systems president and CEO Bezhalel Machlis said, “We continue to expand our production infrastructure and capabilities to support our customers. I thank the IMOD for the trust placed in our management and employees. Elbit Systems continues to develop, manufacture and deliver top-tier technological solutions and products that are combat-proven to our customers in Israel and worldwide.”
Every Republican senator but one protests Biden administration’s ‘partial arms embargo’ on Israel
Senate Republicans called on the Biden administration to expedite arms deliveries to Israel, accusing the White House of slow-rolling weapons sales to the Jewish state.

“We write once again to protest your administration’s partial arms embargo against Israel,” wrote the 48 Republicans on Friday, led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). “The actions of the Biden-Harris administration run counter to our long history of robust military cooperation with Israel and cast doubt upon the reliability of the United States as a long-term security partner.

“Your actions also violate the will of Congress, as expressed in the recent supplemental that funded emergency military support to Israel,” the senators added. “Your administration must stop accommodating Iran and its terrorist allies now.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has previously taken positions opposing U.S. aid to Israel, was the lone Senate Republican not to sign the letter.

The letter alleges that the Biden administration is “deliberately delaying” 120-millimeter tank ammunition, 120-millimeter mortar ammunition, light tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, F-15s, F-35 engines, joint direct attack munition kits, 2,000-pound bombs, rifles and guided missile systems.

The Biden administration has repeatedly insisted that the only weapons shipment that it paused is the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs, which it argues are likely to cause excessive civilian casualties in densely-populated Gazan cities. U.S. officials have also held up the delivery of M4 and M16 rifles, intended for the Israeli National Police, per the Wall Street Journal.

“We urge you to use every available emergency authority to expedite the physical delivery of all weapons and ammunition to Israel that have been approved by Congress,” the 48 senators wrote.


October 7 failure: When technology alone wasn't enough
Before October 7, Israeli decision-makers did not view the Gaza Strip as any kind of significant threat. Israel had diligently added to its hailed Iron Dome air defense system a cutting-edge and staggeringly costly underground barrier to prevent the tunneling into Israeli territory and the highly sophisticated border fence.

These measures were driven by the containment concept in the decision-making echelons of security and government. Nevertheless, tragically, on October 7, we all witnessed the crushing failure of these advanced and supposedly unbreachable barriers in just a matter of minutes.

We witnessed an utter failure on the part of the IDF Intelligence Directorate and Shin Bet to raise a red flag in the days before the October 7 attack. The intel-collecting network of the IDF Intelligence and Shin Bet had become increasingly reliant on advanced technology, and there are many who claim that this came at the expense of classic indispensable human intelligence, or HUMINT. Meanwhile, the Intelligence Corps' vaunted Unit 8200 had completely forgone the gathering of electronic intelligence – SIGINT. Unit 8200 had also altogether stopped intercepting Hamas tactical radio transmissions. Another staggering example of the overconfidence and inaptitude of the IDF and Shin Bet senior command was the intel showing that dozens of Israeli SIM cards were activated at once from within the Gaza Strip. Senior Intelligence and Shin Bet command again chose not to heed these unequivocal and resounding warnings.

Moreover, the alert systems in Unit 8200, which designed the system, were not online in the hours before the attack. In addition, another no less critical system did not produce critical data ahead of the attack because it was shut down due to the Sukkot holiday. The failure was the lack of planning, and the misguided belief that commanders could control their forces without actually being in the battle arena.

These responses can only be explained by an overconfident leadership that is bound by unrealistic concepts. Prior to October 7, Israeli leadership believed that Hamas was deterred and could not breach the physical border fence and that Israel’s intelligence capabilities were in any case superior. It was also reckoned that the Gazan economy was more important to Hamas than fighting Israel and that all the indications observed ahead of October 7 were simply Hamas’ standard military exercises.
Emily Schrader: The United Nations is at war against women
The United Nations’ recent capitulation to the Taliban at the Third Doha Meeting on Afghanistan was a painful reminder that equality for women is still very much in its infancy in large parts of the world. Instead of standing up to gender apartheid, the UN’s cowardice is enabling it, showing that their moral failings are far beyond their irrational obsession with the Jewish state. In all three Doha meetings on Afghanistan, which have been convened by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, 48.3% of Afghanistan's population have been excluded in one way or another because the meeting's topics do not involve women. In the first meeting in May 2023, women were not invited. In the second meeting in February 2024, women were excluded from the main sessions and that was insufficient for the Taliban, which still refused to meet with (male) UN officials. In the third meeting, women were once again excluded from the event altogether after the UN agreed to appease the Taliban’s demands.

Guterres previously stated: “We will never be silent in the face of unprecedented, systemic attacks on womens’ and girls’ rights,” yet that is exactly what the UN is doing, and has been doing. Instead of standing strongly against policies of gender apartheid, they’re trying to appease the oppressors.

The United Nations is at war against women, despite its statements claiming the polar opposite, because inaction is complicity. It is time for the UN to take decisive action against gender apartheid regimes and organizations, revealing concrete steps to remove them from positions of power in the United Nations.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was elected to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for the 2022-26 term. It served in this role until being removed in December 2023, following the murder of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini by the regime’s morality police for improperly wearing a hijab. But only after hundreds of thousands of protesters inside and outside of the country demanded action did the UN even pay attention. Since then, the UN has selected the Islamic Republic to chair other official UN meetings, including the UN’s conference on disarmament.
UN Watch: Mother of slain 21-year-old kidnapped by UNRWA worker confronts chief at Swiss ceremony
Tonight in Lausanne, Switzerland, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini was confronted by Ayelet Samerano, whose murdered son Yonatan was kidnapped to Gaza by an UNRWA worker on October 7th.

Lazzarini delivered the keynote address for the city of Lausanne’s National Day celebrations, and on the 300th day of the captivity of Yonatan’s body in Gaza.

The decision of Lausanne’s Socialist Party mayor Grégoire Junod to invite Lazzarini sparked outrage among many in Switzerland due to UNRWA’s ties to terror.

Impassioned appeals, letters and petitions were sent to Juno to rescind the divisive invitation, but to no avail. At least two Lausanne lawmakers, Jacques-André Haury and Fabrice Moscheni, announced they would not attend the annual celebration on account of the invitation to Lazzarini.

UNRWA is currently the object of at least six legal proceedings alleging that the agency promotes terrorism, in Canada, France and the US, as well as an ongoing internal UN investigation concerning 14 UNRWA employees accused of taking part in the October 7th massacre.

In 2018, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said that UNRWA “has become part of the problem. UNRWA supplies the ammunition to continue the conflict. By supporting UNRWA, we keep the conflict alive. It’s a perverse logic.”

In 2019, Switzerland temporarily suspended funding for UNRWA, joining Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand, in wake of an ethics report that implicated then commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl in a corruption and abuse scandal.


Family releases video of Gazan mob kicking, abusing dead body of hostage Eitan Levy
The family of Eitan Levy, who was apparently killed on October 7 and his body taken hostage to Gaza, on Saturday released graphic footage of Gazans abusing his dead body.

The video, published on Instagram, shows his body dangling out of a half-open trunk of a car, being driven through the streets of Gaza, while a crowd cheers and excitedly runs after the car.

The scene then cuts to Levy lying on the ground clad in only his underwear as a crowd takes turns coming to kick and stamp on the body amid chants and whistles.

In the post, the family writes that they decided to publish the video to show that there are “no innocents in Gaza.”

“With great pain and hesitation to reveal the trauma we have suffered, we have decided to share the film of the kidnapping and the lynch that was done to Eitan, the family,” wrote.

“This is proof that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. Forty-three weeks we’ve lived in indescribable suffering. One hundred and fifteen hostages are left behind. This is the time to bring them all home,” the family said.

In December, the Bat Yam municipality, where Levy lived, announced that he was dead. He was previously considered a hostage in Gaza.

Until now, it has not been clear how and when Levy was murdered.


UN official, leaving post in Jerusalem, says Israel won’t extend visa
Israel is refusing to extend visas for a significant portion of U.N. staff and other non-governmental organizations, a Jerusalem-based official with the United Nations said on Thursday.

During a briefing about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, Andrea De Domenico, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian territories, told reporters that would be his final briefing, as Israeli authorities had not granted his visa extension request.

The relationship between Israel and the United Nations has spiraled since Oct. 7, with Jerusalem repeatedly accusing U.N. officials and bodies of siding with Hamas, showing little to no care for hostages held in Gaza and applying double standards to the Jewish state, as it fends off attacks and threats on multiple fronts from Iran-aligned terror groups.

De Domenico accused the Israeli military of “becoming more and more aggressive” in dealing with U.N. staff in Judea and Samaria, claiming that his colleagues have been “systematically stopped at checkpoints.”

The Israeli military “request the staff to step out of the vehicle, take out the keys, and [is] wanting to ID every single staff,” he added.

Over the last 10 months, most national U.N. staff cannot access the global body’s facilities in the eastern portion of Jerusalem because of a lack of permits, according to De Domenico.
Seth Mandel: But Is It Good For the Jews?
For pro-Israel Jews, the catch is that Shapiro’s identity as a practicing Jew will be coopted and used as a shield to deflect criticism of Harris’s potential moves against Israel. Another possibility is that Harris will feel obligated to concede something to her anti-Zionist progressive base in return for picking a proud Jew as a running mate.

Those are both very real possibilities, but they mostly revolve around Harris’s actions. Some American Jews are worried about how the American public will respond.

“Is the antisemitism going to increase because now you’d have the person who sleeps next to her and the person who would be her closest political ally are both Jewish?” a Jewish former Democratic elected official told CNN. “Does it make it more dangerous for those of us in the Jewish community?”

This is another time-honored concern of the Jewish world: If we fulfill anti-Semites’ conspiracist fantasies by actually having power, it will provoke a reaction from unstable corners.

To which I would respond with an important principle to living as a Jew in the world: Anti-Semitism is something to plan for, not something to plan around.

Which means that in all cases, we should be ready for Jew-hatred—but only in extreme cases should its anticipation force us to change our life’s path.

Conspiracy theorists are going to believe what they want to believe. Everything we know about such people suggests that information that would debunk their worldview only concretizes it. They consider conflicting data to be part of the conspiracy itself. There is, therefore, almost no way to convince them of reality.

But even if we could convince them they were wrong, we shouldn’t want to. It upsets people when Jews are successful, but that doesn’t mean Jews should eschew success to guard the feelings of the snowflake skinheads.
Josh Shapiro seeks to downplay his time as IDF volunteer after college op-ed resurfaces
Pennsylvania Governor and potential vice presidential nominee Josh Shapiro tries to distance himself from a recently uncovered op-ed he wrote in college in which he identified as a former volunteer in the IDF and argued that the Palestinians are too “battle-minded” to pursue peace with Israel.

“While he was in high school, Josh Shapiro was required to do a service project, which he and several classmates completed through a program that took them to a kibbutz in Israel where he worked on a farm and at a fishery,” Shapiro’s spokesperson Manuel Bonder tells The Times of Israel.

“The program also included volunteering on service projects on an Israeli army base. At no time was he engaged in any military activities,” Bonder adds in a statement responding to an inquiry regarding the nature of his volunteer work.

In the 1993 op-ed, which dismissed the recently signed Oslo Accords, Shapiro wrote, “Despite my skepticism as a Jew and a past volunteer in the Israeli army, I strongly hope and pray that this ‘peace plan’ will be successful.”

While Shapiro’s Jewish roots are well established — including his enrollment at the Akiba Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia — the op-ed from his time at the University of Rochester appeared to be the first revelation of such direct ties to the IDF.

“Palestinians will not coexist peacefully,” Shapiro also wrote in the op-ed titled “Peace Not Possible.”

“They do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States. They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own,” added the then-20-year-old.


Mossad hired IRGC agents in May to plant explosives that killed Haniyeh — report
The Mossad spy agency enlisted agents from within the Revolutionary Guards to plant explosives in the Tehran guesthouse where Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was staying, according to a Saturday article in The Telegraph.

The report came amid news that the authorities in Tehran were carrying out a series of arrests in connection with the killing, with the New York Times saying senior Iranian intelligence officers, military officials, and staff at the guesthouse were among some two dozen people held.

The Telegraph report appeared to corroborate a New York Times article on Thursday that said the Palestinian terror chief was not killed in an aerial strike as Iran has claimed.

Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s death since the explosion early Wednesday morning, though Iran and its proxies in the region, including Hamas, have vowed revenge on the Jewish state.

The Telegraph cited two Iranian officials as saying that the initial plan was to assassinate Haniyeh when he was in Tehran in May for the funeral of the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash. That operation was reportedly called off due to the large number of people in the building and the seemingly high possibility of failure.

Instead, according to the British daily, the agents went ahead and planted explosives in three different rooms at the compound, and later left Iran. The sources quoted in the report said surveillance footage shows them moving discretely from room to room. They reportedly detonated the bombs from abroad.

“They are now certain that Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi security unit,” an official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told the newspaper, referring to a unit tasked with protecting senior officials.

Another IRGC official was quoted as saying: “It is a humiliation for Iran and a huge security breach.” The IRGC runs the guesthouse in an upscale neighborhood of Tehran where Haniyeh and other dignitaries were staying.


Turkey blocking NATO cooperation with Israel over Gaza ‘massacre,’ officials say
Turkey has blocked cooperation between NATO and Israel since October because of its war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza and said the alliance should not engage with Israel as a partner until there is an end to the conflict, sources familiar with the process said.

Israel carries the status of NATO partner and has fostered close relations with the military alliance and some of its members, notably its biggest ally the United States.

Before Israel’s offensive in Gaza — prompted by Hamas’s thousands-strong October 7 rampage through southern Israel that left 1,200 people dead and saw 251 kidnapped — NATO member Turkey had been working to mend its long-strained ties with Israel.

Since then, Ankara has been fiercely critical of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which it claims amounts to a genocide, and has halted all bilateral trade. It has also slammed many Western allies for their support of Israel.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources said Turkey had vetoed all NATO engagement with Israel since October, including joint meetings and exercises, saying it viewed Israel’s “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza as a violation of NATO’s founding principles.


Israel ready for defense, ‘immediate’ offense against looming Iranian attack
As the Jewish state awaits Iran’s response to this week’s targeted killings of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist leaders, the Israel Defense Forces is on high alert “both on the defense and offense,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the military, said on Thursday night.

“IDF forces are deployed in the air, sea and land and are prepared for any scenario, and especially for attack plans in the immediate time frame,” Hagari told reporters at a briefing.

He noted that Israel has proven able to defend itself against threats and to “respond strongly on the offensive.”

The IDF’s Home Front Command guidelines remain unchanged. “As soon as there are changes, we will immediately inform you through all the platforms and channels of the IDF and Home Front Command to allow for proper preparation,” Hagari said. “I will be here to update you immediately.”

The Jewish state has “excellent defense systems” and Israel’s international partners “will strengthen their forces in the region to help us in the face of these threats,” Hagari said. “However, no defense is hermetic.”

The Israeli military spokesman said that it is important to stay vigilant, adhere to guidelines and seek immediate shelter if sirens activate.

“The strength and spirit that you, the public, have demonstrated over the past few months is what allows IDF forces to continue to focus on the operational goals on the various fronts,” he said.
Five of Sinwar's greatest allies eliminated in attack on Gaza terror tunnel
Approximately 10 days ago, several senior Hamas members, including Ruhi Mushtaha, a close associate of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, were reportedly killed, according to a report in the Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

In addition to Mushtaha, Bassam Al-Saraj and three other high-ranking members of Hamas's military wing, including intelligence chief Abed Al-Hadi Siam of the Gaza Brigade, were also eliminated.

The terrorists were reportedly killed in a tunnel that was attacked.

A strike close to Sinwar
Mushtaha and Sinwar had spent many years together in Israeli prisons and were released together as part of the Gilad Shalit deal.

In 2011, they participated in Hamas's internal elections, becoming influential leaders within the terrorist organization and gaining control over many of its components. They reportedly had a special relationship with the now-eliminated Mohammed Deif and other members of the Qassam Brigades' leadership.

Samah Al-Saraj is known for his rare media appearances, yet he is a prominent figure in Hamas. He has also been a member of its political bureau for three election cycles and has a role in managing financial portfolios.

According to the report, Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas's political bureau, stated, "We cannot confirm any of the reports published in the media or by other sources."


Jewish Nonprofit Calls on Emmys to Rescind Palestinian Journalist’s ‘Inexcusable’ Nom, Citing Ties to PFLP
Creative Community for Peace, a Jewish entertainment nonprofit, is calling for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to rescind an Emmy nomination for Bisan Atef Owda, a Palestinian journalist, who the organization says is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Owda was nominated at the 2024 News & Documentary Emmys in the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form category, alongside Qatari-owned media outlet AJ+, for their series “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive.”

Nominations for the 45th annual awards were announced July 25, as selected by a far-reaching, anonymous body of “individuals with significant experience in the fields of broadcast and online journalism and documentary filmmaking at the national level,” according to NATAS.

Owda is a journalist, activist and filmmaker best known for her work on social media platforms like Instagram (4.7 million followers) and TikTok (191,500 followers), in which she documents her experience during the ongoing Israel-Hamas War in Gaza. She won a Peabody Award for “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive” earlier this year.

CCFP, a pro-Israel nonprofit organization, discovered Owda’s long-standing ties to PFLP, which has been a designated terrorist organization in the U.S. since 1997. The journalist regularly spoke at PFLP rallies and hosted events to honor Palestinians injured or killed in violent confrontations with Israeli soldiers. In 2018, the PFLP explicitly referred to Owda as a member of the Progressive Youth Union of the organization.
IDF releases file seized in Gaza to show Al Jazeera reporter was Hamas member
The IDF on Saturday published a 2021 Hamas document obtained during its operations in the Gaza Strip that it says proves that Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul was a member of the terror group.

Al-Ghoul was killed in an IDF drone strike in Gaza City on Wednesday, alongside Al Jazeera cameraman Ramy El-Rify.

The IDF said that al-Ghoul participated in the October 7 attack on Israel as a member of the terror group’s elite Nukhba force, and was later involved in instructing terror operatives on how to film and distribute videos of attacks on Israeli troops.

The document, which the IDF says was obtained from Hamas computers seized in the Strip, included the details of thousands of operatives in the terror group’s military wing.

According to the document, from 2021, al-Ghoul was an engineer in Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade, the IDF says.

Al Jazeera has denied Israel’s assertion that al-Ghoul was a Hamas operative.

“Despite the false attempts by Hamas and Al Jazeera to present al-Ghoul as a journalist, al-Ghoul was an active terrorist in the Hamas terror organization,” the military said.

In a statement on Wednesday, Hamas condemned the killings as a “heinous crime” which it said was “aimed at terrorizing and silencing” Palestinian journalists as they reported “the ongoing genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for nearly 10 months.”

Al Jazeera, which broadcasts in English and Arabic, has been the focus of months of criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

In early May, the government banned Al Jazeera in Israel, shuttering and raiding its offices, alleging it was actively harming national security. Last month, the Tel Aviv District Court extended the ban on the network.

In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an airstrike in Gaza were terror operatives.

The following month, it accused another journalist with the channel, who was wounded in a separate strike, of being a deputy company commander with Hamas.


Special advisor: Israel’s response ‘timely and appropriate’
Israel’s “acceptance of accountability” for the botched strike on April 1 that killed seven aid workers, including an Australian, “and investigation, reporting and responding has, to this point, been timely, appropriate and, with some exceptions, sufficient,” the special advisor appointed by the government to look into the incident said on Friday.

Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin said the IDF “has taken full accountability” for the incident in which the aid workers, who were employed by World Central Kitchen, were killed.

ACM Binskin’s assessment was “that the IDF strike on the WCK aid workers was not knowingly or deliberately directed against the WCK.”

His report also noted the steps undertaken by Israel in response to the event are in line with the processes of western militaries like the Australian Defence Forces.

Binskin said IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi “acted quickly” to hold those responsible to account. “His actions in dismissing two officers from their positions and reprimanding three others was timely and appears appropriate to the situation,” Binskin said.

“However, while timely in their response, the brevity of the public statement made after the Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism [FFAM] investigation lacked the full detail surrounding the incident and led to confusion and speculation over what had actually happened and why.”

Binskin noted that in response to the incident, the IDF has taken some measures to better coordinate NGO activities in Gaza and to increase the oversight of strikes around humanitarian aid activities.

“However, more can be done to prioritise the safety of aid workers operating in Gaza,” he said.

“Operationally, there are always areas of improvement available. Of importance to coordinating NGO operations on the ground in Gaza, the continued focus on improved deconfliction measures that are trusted by the NGOs should remain at the forefront.”

He also recommended Israel make a formal apology. “As a part of such an apology, there would also be an opportunity for Israel to offer compensation to the families of those who were killed,” he said.


Former NBA player Eddy Curry 'adopts' baby hostage Kfir Bibas for awareness campaign
Former NFL, NBA, and MLB stars are part of the #SportsSpeaksUp campaign to “adopt” Israeli hostages by bringing attention to their plight and advocating for their release on social media. Project Max, a movement to fight racism, antisemitism, and intolerance through sports, spearheaded the campaign with the Maccabi World Union.

Eric Rubin, Israel based Global Ambassador for the Maccabi World Union and Executive Director of Project Max, explained to The Jerusalem Post how every athlete who he asked to be a part of the campaign wanted to come on board. “This, to them, and to me, and I think to most people, is not an issue about Israel and Hamas or Israel and the Palestinians,” he stated, “This is about humanity.”

Rubin matched up athletes with the hostages he felt they could identify with by looking at their personal histories and family situations. Former NBA star Eddy Curry, who played for the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks and won the Miami Heat’s 2012 championship, tragically lost his 10-month-old daughter, Ava, to gun violence in 2009.

Rubin thought to match him with Kfir Bibas, who was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, when he was nine months old.

Hamas video footage shows Kfir’s mother, Shiri, 32, looking petrified as she holds Kfir and his four-year-old brother Ariel in her arms while surrounded by terrorists. Her husband, Yarden, was also taken hostage.

Curry told The Jerusalem Post that if this story “doesn’t make you just put down whatever side you’re representing and say, ‘this is what’s right, this is what matters,’ and just make you feel something, then you’re a monster.” He added, “I couldn't save my child, and I'm just praying that I could be one of the small voices to help save these children.”

Curry flew to Israel on July 16, 2024, for a weeklong trip sponsored by Athletes for Israel, a non-profit organization that combats antisemitism by bringing athletes to the Holy Land.
Ariel Bibas will turn five in Gaza captivity on Monday
The extended Bibas family will mark hostage Ariel Bibas’ fifth birthday on Monday, August 5 with a march from Tel Aviv’s Habima Square to Hostages Square.

It’s a birthday no one wants to forget but will be painful to mark, said Maurice Shnaider, a great uncle to Ariel Bibas and his younger brother Kfir, and uncle to Ariel’s mother, Shiri, also held hostage in Gaza, as is Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband.

“We don’t know if Shiri knows that Monday is August 5,” said Shnaider. “Does she have a calendar? Does she count down the days?”

Ariel, the now-familiar redhead, a lover of Batman, won’t have a cake or gift or blow out any candles, said Shnaider.

Instead, the family will march in protest and publicize a video of Ariel recorded at his fourth birthday party at the Kibbutz Nir Oz nursery.

“The world needs to understand the situation that allows these little boys to mark their birthdays as hostages,” said Shnaider, speaking to The Times of Israel. “The most brave boy in the world will celebrate his fifth birthday in captivity.”

Ariel Bibas and his baby brother Kfir, who turned one in captivity, were taken hostage with their mother, Shiri Bibas, on October 7, as she clutched them in her arms, wrapping them with a baby blanket and was pushed out of her home by Hamas terrorists.

Their father, Yarden Bibas, was taken hostage separately. Since then, there have been scraps of information about the couple and their redheaded boys, but no real evidence of their whereabouts.


Al Jazeera English: History, genocide and Israel’s war on Gaza: Mehdi Hasan & Benny Morris | Head to Head
In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris on his support for Israel’s war on Gaza, the history around the founding of Israel and the Nakba.

Morris’ book ‘The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949’ dismantled many of the myths behind the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians during that period. His critics, however, say he now justifies many of those crimes.

Hasan and Morris are joined by a panel of three experts:
Diana Buttu – a Palestinian lawyer and former advisor for the PLO
Daniel Levy – a former Israeli peace negotiator and current President of the US/ Middle East Project
Emmanuel Navon – an International Relations lecturer at Tel Aviv University

This was filmed before the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran on 31 July.


Eylon Levy is giving people the words they need to defend Israel
Eylon Levy became an Internet meme after the Sky News presenter Kay Burley asked him on Nov. 23 if the Jewish state values Palestinians less than Israelis since it is willing to engage in lopsided prisoner swaps, with each Israeli exchanged for many more Palestinians.

Levy, a spokesman for the State of Israel, stared wide-eyed for several moments before answering, and a meme was born.

“That is an astonishing accusation,” he told the journalist. “If we could release one prisoner for every one hostage, we would obviously do that. … Really, that’s a disgusting accusation.”

Raised in London by Israeli parents with Iraqi heritage, Levy, who made aliyah in 2014 at age 23 and joined the Israeli army during the 2014 Gaza war, became one of the most recognizable people defending the Jewish state after Oct. 7.

Despite developing a large following in Israel and the Diaspora, the well-spoken British Israeli was suspended following an online clash with David Cameron, the British foreign secretary. There were also reports of tension between Levy and Sara Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s wife.

Since working as an official Israeli government spokesman, Levy, 33, launched an independent group—the Israeli Citizens Spokespersons’ Office—and he has spoken critically about the Jewish state’s engagement with the international press.

“The reason that Israel is losing the information war is that it’s not even trying to win it,” Levy told JNS. “Yes, we’re outnumbered. Yes, we’re outmanned. Yes, we have a whole army of NGOs and U.N. agencies mobilized against us, and that means that the hill will be steep.”
Israel: State of a Nation: Israelophobia | Jake Wallis Simons on the New Face of Antisemitism and the Battle for Western Values
Jake Wallis Simons, editor of The Jewish Chronicle and author of the prescient 2023 book Israelophobia, sits down with Eylon for a deep dive into the latest incarnation of the world's oldest hatred. Simons breaks down the obsessive hatred of Israel, and the Anti-Semitism that it masks, and traces the evolution of Jew hatred from religious to racial, and now to political forms.

The conversation covers the rise of anti-Israel sentiment, particularly among younger generations in the UK, influenced heavily by social media and radical ideologies. Simons expresses concern over the complacency of Western societies, particularly in Britain, where anti-Israel protests have become increasingly prominent. He warns of the dangers of this complacency, suggesting that the West could face serious challenges if it fails to defend its values against growing external threats from countries like Iran, Russia, and China.

Simons also discusses the potential implications of a Labour government in the UK under Sir Keir Starmer, particularly regarding UK-Israel relations, and the possibility of diplomatic crises arising from Labour's stance on Israel and Palestine. The episode concludes with a game where Simons critiques prominent figures known for their anti-Israel rhetoric, highlighting the impact of their views on public opinion.

This episode provides a deep dive into the intersection of anti-Semitism, politics, and media, offering insights into the challenges facing Israel and the broader implications for Western democracies.

00:00 - Coming Up
01:12 - Monologue
02:45 - Main Titles
03:03 - Israelophobia
08:00 - Antisemitism in the UK
14:39 - Ignoring Islamism for fear of Islamophobia
24:11 - The Jewish Chronicle: Mission and Esposés
27:32 - New New Labour?
31:12 - UK-Israel relations
34:22 - Iran and the new Axis of Evil
41:05 - What this means for Israel
44:07 - The Isrealophobia Game


Here I Am With Shai Davidai: "I sued #harvard " | EP 03 Shabbos Kestenbaum
Welcome to the third episode of "Here I Am with Shai Davidai," a podcast that delves into the rising tide of antisemitism through insightful discussions with top Jewish advocates.

In this podcast episode, Shai interviews Shabbos Kestenbaum, discussing various topics including Shabbos's background as a Modern Orthodox Jew, his experiences at Harvard, and the impact of the October 7th events on his life. Shabbos shares his upbringing in an Orthodox family, his education in yeshiva, and his commitment to Jewish traditions.

The conversation delves into the challenges of being visibly Jewish in the current climate, especially post-October 7th, and Shabbos's decision to travel to Israel to support his family and community. They also touch on the anti-Semitic incidents at Harvard and Shabbos's efforts to combat them, including his involvement in a lawsuit against the university.


Archbishop of Canterbury urges nations to respect ICJ opinion on Israeli 'occupation'
The Church of England's spiritual head urged governments on Friday to respect the findings of the United Nations top court that Israel's 'occupation' of the West Bank is illegal, saying the law should not be upheld in a "selective manner."

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), known as the World Court, said in an advisory opinion last month the occupation should be withdrawn as soon as possible. It is not binding but carries weight under international law.

At the time, Israel's foreign ministry rejected the opinion as "fundamentally wrong" and one-sided. There was no immediate reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments on Friday.

Justin Welby backs ICJ ruling
Justin Welby - who also heads the worldwide Anglican Communion - said in a statement the ICJ opinion had made it clear the 'occupation' is "unlawful" and must end.

"At a time when the world is marked by increasing violations of international law ... it is imperative governments around the world reaffirm their unwavering commitment to all decisions by the ICJ, irrespective of the situation," Welby said.

He did not spell out how governments should react, but said he prayed that UN member states would make their actions consistent with the ruling.

Welby said it was clear to him from many visits in recent decades the "system of military rule" imposed by successive Israeli governments in occupied Palestinian territories was one of "systemic discrimination."

The ICJ case stems from a 2022 request for a legal opinion from the United Nations General Assembly that predates the war in Gaza which began in October.

Hamas terrorists stormed across the border into Israeli communities on Oct. 7 and, according to Israeli tallies, killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 253 into captivity.


Rebel News: 'Jews for a free Palestine' protest townhall at Toronto synagogue
Ezra Levant hears from a group of anti-Israel Jews who showed up to a Toronto synagogue to protest a town hall meeting where politicians and the chief of police were discussing a rise in antisemitism.




Officeworks managing director says incident ‘not acceptable’
Officeworks managing director Sarah Hunter has apologised to the Jewish community over the incident in which a visibly Jewish man was refused service.

But the customer at the centre of the controversy has rejected the apology, saying he is still going ahead with action against the company at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

The incident in March saw a staff member decline a request to laminate an article in the Australian Jewish News because she was “pro-Palestine”.

Hunter on Friday directly addressed the Jewish community, telling The AJN, “I’m sorry that this happened in our store, I want you to feel safe. We want to be part of the community in which we live and work, and we are going to use this as a moment to continue to improve education around antisemitism and discrimination. It is not acceptable in our store.”

She rejected the idea that the company didn’t take the incident seriously at the time.

“When we received the letter and the customer complaint in March, we investigated it all within 48 hours and responded back with an apology to the customer, as well as addressing the other concerns that they had raised in their letter,” she said.

Hunter said the staff member was given a final warning and transferred to another store, and also visited the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.

“And as a result of that, did a complete 180 in their understanding of the impact that they had had, the impact on the Jewish community, and how disrespectful and inappropriate that their behaviour was and how wrong it was,” she said.

Hunter has been in contact with Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin and they are going to work together to create a training session for company leaders to educate them around antisemitism and discrimination.
Court sides with MIT in dismissing campus antisemitism suit
Efforts by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to hold their school accountable for allowing a proliferation of antisemitism have hit a wall as the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts embraced arguments for dismissal.

Judge Richard G. Stearns supported the defendant in StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, Katerina Boukin, and Marilyn Meyers v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Stearns wrote in his decision that “to fault MIT for what proved to be a failure of clairvoyance and a perhaps too measured response to an outburst of ugliness on its campus would send the unhelpful message that anything less than a faultless response in similar circumstances would earn no positive recognition in the eyes of the law.”

In his analysis, the student plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and did not show that MIT failed to prevent a conspiracy to interfere with students’ civil rights.
St Andrews University rector dismissed after ‘Gaza genocide’ comments
The rector of St Andrews University has been dismissed from its governing body after she condemned Israel’s “genocidal attacks” on Gaza.

Stella Maris’s statement to all students at the university last November caused “anxiety and fear” for some Jewish students, a situation that the university said gave it no choice but to remove her.

In her email to students, Maris described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocidal” and condemned “apartheid, siege, illegal occupation and collective punishment”. In the following weeks, she wrote social media posts that were found to be “discourteous and disrespectful”.

The university commissioned an investigation by Lady Morag Ross KC into Maris’s comments. The barrister found that some Jewish students were distressed and “feared for their safety” after receiving the email. Ross’s report said other students felt “validated and heard” by Maris.

In an 80-page report, the barrister concluded that Maris had caused reputational damage to the university and noted the rector “told me that she would take the same decision again and will not apologise”.

The university’s government court has removed Maris as its president. The chair of the court, Ray Perman, said the panel had “concluded that she is in serious and persistent breach of her responsibilities.

“Under charity law and the Scottish code of good HE [higher education] governance, regrettably, court has no choice but to discharge Stella Maris from two of the administrative roles that are traditionally associated with being rector of a university,” Perman said.

“Court wishes to stress that this decision has no bearing on Ms Maris’s freedom of speech, to which she is entitled and for which, like everyone else, she is personally accountable. We recognise that parts of the rector’s statement were an important source of comfort to students affected by the conflict in Gaza,” he added.
Federal review discovers Drexel’s failures in addressing antisemitism
Drexel University in Philadelphia has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education following a review of how the school handled 36 reports of alleged harassment from October 2022 through January 2024.

While the Oct. 23 complaint of a potential violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act originally reported to the Education Department—a fire in a dorm—did not originate in antisemitism, researching the university’s records found that numerous other reports did.

“This review demonstrated growing evidence of a hostile environment for over 18 months,” the department stated in an Aug. 2 announcement of its conclusions. Examples included swastika graffiti, removed mezuzahs, social-media threats and vandalism by masked individuals at Drexel’s Center for Jewish Life.

It described the school’s response as “limited to addressing each incident on an individual basis, including offering supportive resources to students, but did not consider whether broader and more responsive action was needed for the university community.”

The university has agreed to numerous measures to address the hostile campus environment, such as reviewing the previous two years’ discrimination incidents, inform the Education Department of complaints in the next two school years and create an action plan after conducting surveys. The settlement also requires Drexel to revise its policies and provide staff training.


Congress should investigate the Washington Post and the NY Times
Reporting on Hezbollah’s confessed rocket strike that killed 12 children on a soccer field in a Druze town on the Golan Heights, the Washington Post’s July 29 front page featured a huge photo of grieving shawl-draped women and a wailing teenager surrounding a framed picture of one of the murdered victims.

Below the photo was the banner headline across three columns: “Israel hits targets in Lebanon.” Under the photo was the name of the pictured victim, identifying her as living in the “Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.” A subheadline declared that “international calls for restraint” had “muted” Israeli “strikes against Hezbollah installations.”

The totally false impression conveyed to the multitudes who glance at daily newspapers in supermarket racks was that Lebanese mothers were weeping over the murder of their Arab children by the Jewish state’s military, which had been forced to “mute” its “strikes.”

The truth was just the opposite: Hezbollah’s rockets had murdered Druze children in a Druze village.

The overall message conveyed by how the Post’s editorial and layout staff covered this news story was hatred of Israel and Jews. Hezbollah was supposedly not to blame because the caption to the photo said that Hezbollah “denies connection to the attack.” But there was clear proof that Hezbollah had launched the Iranian falek-1 rocket.

Protests poured into the Post’s offices, including the American Jewish Committee’s assertion that, rather than journalism, the Post’s front page was “a dangerous distortion of reality.”

An “editor’s note” appeared the following day. It did not retract but said the front-page coverage “did not provide adequate context.”

The New York Times on July 29 had a front-page five-column aerial Reuters photo of a huge crowd surrounding 10 coffins of children “killed in a rocket strike from Lebanon” against a village in “the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.”

The accompanying story was headlined: “Diplomats race to reduce risk of a wider war.” The story identified a “rocket from Lebanon” as having caused the children’s deaths. There was no mention of Hezbollah—which was already acknowledged as the perpetrator—other than to say that “Israel blames Hezbollah and retaliates.”

The impression—albeit not as pronounced as in the Post’s reporting—was that this tragedy was all Israel’s fault. The Times issued no corrective note.
Reddit has taken ‘several important steps’ to curb Jew-hatred, ADL says
The social network Reddit, which posted $243 million in revenue in its first report since going public in March, has agreed to take “several important steps” to combat antisemitism on its platform, the Anti-Defamation League said on Thursday.

The ADL said that six moderators on the site who run channels—called subreddits—approached the nonprofit for help addressing Jew-hatred. (The site is known both for its subreddits and its chats, called “Ask Me Anything” or AMA, in which a person, often someone famous, fields questions directly from readers.)

“The six moderators came from a variety of Jewish-focused subreddits who have, by their own estimate, an average of 78,000 subscribers, and receive approximately 50 posts and 1,400 comments per subreddit per day,” the ADL said.

The moderators “face steady personal and targeted harassment from users,” it added, “antisemitism has had a chilling effect on speech for the moderators and those on their subreddits, and the response to antisemitism reports on the site has stopped at least one moderator from reporting instances of antisemitism.”


PMW: Fatah brags it has more terrorists than Hamas
Fatah is refusing to give up its status among Palestinians as the leading terror organization targeting Israelis. Seeing Hamas’ popularity surge among Palestinians after the October 7 Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel, Fatah—the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party—has stressed throughout the war that it has more terrorists, prisoners, and “Martyrs” against Israel “than any other faction.”

Already on October 7, Fatah was bragging that it participated in Hamas’ massacre so as not to be left out of popular Palestinian support for the atrocities. Palestinian Media Watch published the following video showing terrorists wearing yellow Fatah headbands participating in the terror invasion. Throughout the video, chants of “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is greatest”) are played in the background. PMW again warns of graphic images:
Text on screen: “The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – military publicity – live images from the battle”
Fatah terrorist: “We have plundered from them… Today [Oct. 7, 2023] we broke into the military post Nahal Oz, and we hit what we hit, we took as plunder what we took, and we killed soldiers and stepped on their heads.”
Fatah terrorist: “You (i.e., Israelis) will see this with your own eyes, Allah willing.”
A Fatah terrorist places his foot on the head of a murdered young Israeli. Another, holding a Kalashnikov assault rifle, poses in front of an Israeli military vehicle.
Fatah terrorist: “Allahu Akbar and praise Allah… From the heart of these temporary settlements (i.e., Israeli cities and towns), Allah willing, we had a prominent and clear role.”
[Fatah Movement – Bethlehem Branch, Telegram channel, Oct. 7, 2023]

Note that Nahal Oz is not a military base, as claimed by Fatah in the video, but is an Israeli civilian kibbutz, and most of those murdered on October 7 by Hamas and Fatah terrorists were Israeli civilians.

Since then, Fatah has continued to brag that “more than two-thirds” of terrorist prisoners are from Fatah and that Fatah was active on the terror scene “even before” October 7. They also emphasize the great number of dead Fatah terrorists—the so-called “Martyrs”—who are also said to far outnumber Hamas’ “Martyrs” in general. Furthermore, Fatah officials take pride in the fact that not only are their members terrorists, but, at the same time, some of them are also members of the PA Security Forces carrying out a double role as police officers by day and terrorists by night, as PMW has reported in the past.

Western leaders have been eager to promote Fatah and the PA as “moderates” who are suitable to form a new government in the Gaza Strip “the day after” the war. They would do well to read and watch these statements, and understand who the PA and Fatah really are.

Fatah official brags: Fatah has more terrorists than any other faction
Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “We [in Fatah] are peaceful, but our Martyrs (i.e., dead terrorists) are more numerous than the Martyrs of all the factions combined,and also our prisoners (i.e., terrorists) are more than two-thirds of the prisoners in the prisons.”
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, May 16, 2024]


House reps introduce ‘Bunker Buster Act’ to thwart Iranian nuclear development
Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) announced legislation on Tuesday aimed at halting the Iranian regime’s nuclear aspirations.

The two congressmen unveiled “the Bunker Buster Act,” which would allow the U.S. president to provide Israel with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, a munition capable of destroying underground facilities developing nuclear weapons.

The legislation would require the U.S. Department of Defense to conduct a study with the Jewish state to produce a report for Congress on whether transferring “bunker buster” bombs would serve America’s national security interests. The weapon weighs 30,000 pounds, measures 20.5 feet in length, and according to the Air Force, is intended to penetrate up to 200 feet underground before exploding.

U.S. President Joe Biden does not possess the authority to give Israel this weapon. The legislation would provide congressional authorization for him—or the victor of the 2024 presidential contest—to do so following the completion of the study.

“We cannot sit silently while the ayatollah and his minions plot to wipe Israel off the map,” said Mast, who urged that “Israel must have the tools necessary to protect its people against Iranian aggression.”

Gottheimer called the bill “critical to America’s global fight against terrorism.”

He said that “while Iran and its terrorist proxies continue to wreak havoc and chaos around the world, we must ensure they can never threaten the U.S. or our allies with a nuclear weapon.”
Germany expels director of Iran’s Islamic Center in Berlin
The German government deported the Iran-linked Imam of the Islamic Center in Berlin, Nasir Niknejad in late June, according to information obtained by Iran International's correspondent in Berlin.

According to these reports, Niknejad and his wife were detained at Berlin airport upon their return from a one-month leave, three weeks after the closure of Islamic centers affiliated with the Islamic Republic across Germany, and were subsequently deported back to Iran.

An Iran International source told our correspondent, Ahmad Samadi, that Niknejad became involved in a confrontation with airport police after realizing he was not permitted to enter Germany.

Previously, in November 2022, Soleiman Mousavifar, the deputy head of the Islamic Center of Hamburg, was expelled for supporting Hezbollah.

Germany shut down the Khamenei-controlled Islamic Center of Hamburg and Blue Mosque in July for its role in serving as a hub of terrorist ideology, antisemitism and anti-democratic threats to the Federal Republic’s constitution order, according to the interior ministry.

When asked the closure, a German interior ministry (BMI) spokesman, Lars Harmsen, told Iran International on Thursday that “In addition to the Islamisches Zentrum Hamburg, the BMI has also banned sub-organisations and confiscated their assets. These were the following: the Islamische Akademie Deutschland, the Verein der Förderer einer iranischen-islamischen Moschee in Hamburg, the Zentrum der Islamischen Kultur in Frankfurt (Main), the Islamische Vereinigung Bayern in Munich, and the Islamisches Zentrum Berlin.”

When asked by Iran International if the confiscated assets from Iran’s regime, the Islamic Center of Hamburg and Blue Mosque and other entities, will be used to provide compensation to the Iranian victims of terrorism in Germany, the spokesman said, "Concrete plans for a future usage of the Blue Mosque and other confiscated assets can only be made by the BMI once the ban is final. Therefore, the outcome of the administrative procedure remains to be seen.”

When questioned about future closures of other Iranian regime-linked and controlled centers, mosques and associations the BMI spokesman said, “In principle, the BMI does not comment on possible further bans, regardless of whether there is reason to consider them in individual cases or not…”


Why is the National Theatre staging a play with antisemitic tropes on October 7?
I don’t know where you will be on the evening of October 7, but I bet my last Bamba puff it won’t be at the West End’s Gillian Lynne Theatre watching The Lehman Trilogy.

What was the National Theatre thinking when it decided to bring this play, which taps into every antisemitic trope you have ever heard about Jews and money, back to the London stage – and to stage one of the run’s performances on the anniversary of the biggest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust?

In reality, I don’t imagine it gave the matter much thought at all.

Would the National Theatre be so thoughtless about the sensitivities of any other British ethnic minority in a mildly analogous situation? Were there, say, a fêted play about the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, in which scores of people die of extreme heat, accidents and disease each year, would it show the work on the Day of Arafah? These are rhetorical questions, of course. We know the National Theatre would think very carefully indeed about these things. And imagine the uproar if it did not.

Uproar isn’t something one readily associates with the Jews, is it? One reason people don’t care about offending us is because they know our response to public offence is invariably measured. Diaspora Jews don’t demonstrate outside police headquarters, we don’t pull down statues and, on the rare occasions that we take to the streets, there is a noticeably peaceful air to proceedings. During last November’s march against antisemitism in central London, the look on the faces of the police standing along the route was mostly one of baffled boredom. When I asked one officer if she knew how many people had turned up, she seemed pleased to have something to do: she gave me a fulsome answer.

Put another way, people are not scared of physical attacks from Jews. We might feel furious about antisemitism but we remain furiously polite and pursue justice through the law. (Ever wondered why law is such a Jewish profession?) Or we write open letters to newspapers – or pen angry columns in them. (Ever wondered why journalism is such a Jewish profession?)

To be clear, I am not defending Lehman Brothers. Its conduct was indefensible. But it wasn’t the only bank involved in the crash of 2008, was it?
British rabbi arrested for performing illegal non-Jewish circumcision
A British rabbi was arrested and charged for allegedly performing an illegal circumcision on non-Jewish children on Tuesday, according to the Irish Court Service, and Irish and British Jewish authorities.

The London-based Rabbi Jonathan Abraham had traveled to Ireland at the request of local families, according to the Initiation Society to which he was a member. Abraham performed circumcisions on people who were not members of the Irish Jewish community, according to Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder, and local Jewry was not directly involved with the case.

Abraham was charged with performing illegal circumcisions without a medical license, contrary to the 2007 Medical Practitioners Act, said the Irish courts. He appeared before the Dublin District Court on Thursday, and had been remanded to custody until another court appearance on August 6.

Defending the rabbi
The Initiation Society, which was founded in the United Kingdom in 1745 to train and regulate mohels, said that it had no reason to believe that the “well-regarded and highly experienced” Abraham acted unlawfully and noted that there was no suggestion that the circumcisions were performed incorrectly.

“It is commonplace for mohelim to be asked by people outside the Jewish community both within this country and abroad to perform circumcision,” said the society. Abraham “travelled to the Republic of Ireland in good faith in response to requests by the families concerned.”

Wieder said that the Irish Jewish community conducted all circumcisions in full compliance with Irish Law and in a joint statement with Jewish Representative Council of Ireland chair Maurice Cohen said that they been “on top of this situation from the outset.”

“We and other relevant parties are doing everything we can for this man’s welfare, and to ensure that traditional Jewish circumcisions can continue to be performed legally in Ireland,” said Wieder and Cohen.

Wieder cautioned about the spread of misinformation and speculation about the incident.


Historic day at Olympics: Israel wins gold, 2 silvers in windsurfing and gymnastics
Israel’s Tom Reuveny won a sensational Olympic gold in the men’s iQFoil windsurfing final in Marseille on Saturday, while Sharon Kantor took silver in the women’s.

And artistic gymnast Artem Dolgopyat left behind a surprisingly subpar performance in the qualifying round to take second place in the finals, with his floor exercise scoring 14.966, just behind gold medalist Carlos Yulo of the Philippines at 15.000.

The three athletes’ medals sealed a new record for Israel with its fourth, fifth and sixth medals of the Paris Games in a single day, taking the country past its four medals at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

It was also the first time Israel has ever won three medals in a single day at the Games.

Reuveny’s win was a particular shock, as he had previously not even been expected to make it to the semifinals.

Israel’s two windsurfing medals were its first Olympic windsurfing medals since the Beijing Games in 2008. They were the first Olympic medals for Reuveny and Kantor.

Reuveny’s gold is Israel’s fourth ever, and first in the Paris games. It comes 20 years after his coach, Gal Fridman, won Israel’s first-ever gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Kantor is the first female surfer to win an Olympic medal for Israel; her coach, Shahar Zuberi, won a bronze in Beijing.

Dolgopyat won the gold at the Tokyo Olympics, making him the first Israeli athlete to ever win medals at consecutive games.

With Saturday’s three medals, Israel’s total across all Olympic games stands at 19.

Dolgopyat said at a press conference after his win: “I had difficult months in training and in the qualifying round I didn’t do so well and didn’t know if I’d pass. I fell into a sort of depression. The team helped me and picked me up… I came today feeling very good… Now I’m the happiest I could be.”

“Look how many medals we’ve won!” said Kantor after nabbing the silver. “First in judo and now here. It’s incredible.”

“I did it for our brave soldiers,” Reuveny told Channel 12 after taking the gold.


Israeli judoka Raz Hershko secures silver in finals against Brazil opponent
Israeli judoka Raz Hershko has won the silver medal in the Women’s over-78kg final at Paris 2024 after being defeated by Brazil’s Beatriz Souza.

The 26-year-old was unable to fight back after the Brazilian put her in a throw called a ‘Waza-ari’ early on in the match.

Hershko defeated Turkey’s Kayra Ozdemir in 15 seconds in the semifinal earlier on Friday, securing her spot in the final.

Hershko, 26, has been training since the age of four, and is the niece of the current Israeli judo head coach Shany Hershko.

She’s previously been ranked number one in the world for her weight category and has taken medals in European championships as well as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

In April, while competing in the European Judo Championships in Zagreb, Croatia, Hershko dedicated her win to Yonatan Goutin, an Israeli judoka who died saving civilians from Hamas in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.

This marks Israel’s third medal in Judo after Peter Paltchik won the bronze medal after defeating Switzerland’s Daniel Eich in the men’s under-100kg weight class on Thursday.

Moments later, Inbar Lanir won the silver medal in the women’s under-78kg weight class.




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