Friday, September 20, 2024

09/20 Links Pt2: The British Government Must Not Abandon Israel; Biden WH hosted leader of Hamas-linked group; Anti-Israel Protesters Vandalize ROTC; Israel alone, Israel unbowed

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: The British Government Must Not Abandon Israel
In the last six months, I have visited Israel three times. I have had meetings with President Herzog, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defence Minister Gallant and Foreign Minister Katz. I have met every level of the IDF, from strategic planners in Tel Aviv, to Commander Southern Command, two the commanders of both Divisions who fought in Gaza, to ordinary IDF soldiers. In the last month, I have been to Gaza and witnessed the destruction there first hand.

The international attacks on Israel come on three fronts: Israel’s reasons for going to war; Israel’s conduct during the war; and international lawfare. Israel’s reasons for going to war

Firstly, propaganda is used to diminish and downplay Israel’s reason for this war in the first place: 7 October. I have seen demonic footage of that day above and beyond that which is publicly available. I have watched video recorded by Hamas themselves as they slaughtered Jews with inhuman glee. I have walked in human ashes in Kibbutz Be’eri, Nir Oz, and Kfar Aza. I have seen the Nova festival site and spoken to survivors. I have visited the IDF base at Nahal Oz, where amongst other atrocities, Hamas burned alive 22 IDF soldiers. I am friends with hostage families. There is no question – none whatsoever – that Israel’s war in Gaza against the monsters of Hamas is both just and legitimate. Even after three fighting tours in Afghanistan, I have never seen horror that comes close to that which Hamas perpetrated on 7 October.

Israel’s conduct during the war
Secondly is the international propaganda campaign to force Israel to lay down their arms. Israel is fighting against a disinformation machine, funded by their allies in Iran, Qatar, Turkey and other nations. Their aim is to persuade the world that Israel is committing war crimes, so they will pressure Israel to ceasefire, so that Hamas can survive.

Have mistakes and errors been committed in this war? Of course, and Israel’s supporters must confront them head on and own them. That is what moral countries do. We have all seen the footage of the WCK aid convoy strike. An independent Australian investigation agreed with the IDF’s conclusions: it was a sloppy mistake that led to innocent deaths. The IDF has already undertaken procedural changes so it does not happen again.

We have all seen the videos of IDF soldiers misbehaving in the houses of Gaza: unconscionably stupid behaviour that has caused irreparable harm to Israel’s cause in the eyes of the world. Again, it should be easy for us to condemn this stupidity.

Personally, as a British soldier, I take issue with the IDF’s prisoner handling procedures in stripping detainees naked. By the same token, we have all read of the horrors of Sde Temain detention facility and the assaults on prisoners that have taken place. All of these are objectively wrong, but none amount to a pattern of war crimes, and certainly none of them would have been prevented by a ban on UK arms sales.

What really matters is how the broader IDF handled them. They have taken accountability, they have changed procedures and rules of engagement, and they have arrested soldiers where crimes are credibly alleged. They are behaving exactly as I would expect from any Western military in the same situation.

And Western militaries are innocent of none of these things. The cruel truth is that mistakes and law-breaking happen in wartime. When you train young men and women to be aggressive; arm them; and send them into the most extreme of situations; some of them will lose discipline and make bad decisions. This is a simple fact of war. The Australian SAS committed war crimes in Afghanistan, executing prisoners. The British SAS are undergoing an investigation into similar allegations. In Iraq, the British had Camp Breadbasket and Baha Musa. The Americans in Iraq had the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Fallujah killings and the Mahmudiyah rape and murder. In Afghanistan, they killed ten innocent civilians with a drone strike even as they were withdrawing from Kabul. War is never clean or easy. What matters is accountability for mistakes.
Seth Mandel: Can Bennett Follow Bibi’s Path to Power?
Naftali Bennett appears to be the leading candidate to replace Benjamin Netanyahu atop Israeli politics, and the reason is simple: He’s the rare Bibi disciple-turned-rival who has clearly learned from his former boss’s own political rise.

Bennett in 2021 became Israel’s first post-Bibi premier in a decade as part of a rotating premiership with Yair Lapid, a centrist who had assembled a shaky coalition to oust the Likud from power. That government fell after about a year and a half and Netanyahu returned to the big chair.

Now Bennett is laying the groundwork for a comeback. A recent Channel 12 poll shows him leading Netanyahu in a head-to-head matchup by 11 and reveals that a party led by Bennett would be one of the largest in the Knesset. That combination shows a clear path to the premiership for Bennett if the trend holds.

Of course, opposition leader Benny Gantz has faded as a challenger to Netanyahu, but there’s reason to believe Bennett’s poll showing could be more resilient. In fact, the more Bennett seems to follow Netanyahu’s own path to power from earlier in his own career, the more the polls reward him.

Netanyahu began his political career in an ostensibly apolitical, or at least nonpartisan, role. Charismatic and telegenic, he was a diplomat and spokesman in the 1980s. He created a public profile in the media, built a rolodex of important political journalists, and ably made Israel’s case to the world from the outside. In the ’90s, he took over Likud leadership and then became Israel’s youngest-ever prime minister.

In 1999, he lost reelection to Ehud Barak, and made the decision to take a temporary break from politics. He resigned his Knesset seat and went into the private sector, speaking up on political issues as a self-described “concerned citizen” who was learning “to listen.” Within a couple years, Barak’s government was collapsing and Netanyahu passed up a rare opportunity to jump right back in to electoral politics to challenge him, choosing instead to bide his time.

Many see that decision as a mistake in retrospect because Bibi expected his Likud successor, Ariel Sharon, to be a caretaker premier and yet Sharon held on to office and reshaped Israeli politics. But it almost certainly paved the way for Netanyahu’s eventual turn as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. By the time Sharon was felled by a stroke, he had splintered the Likud party. To complete the disengagement from Gaza, Sharon was forced to start his own centrist party. He took top deputies with him, which cleared the Likud of the main potential challengers to Bibi when he stood for party leadership in the wake of Sharon’s departure. The party was all his from that point on.

Bennett’s current strategy follows a similar path. In Israel, it has often been beneficial for aspiring leaders to avoid rancorous political moments and stay above the fray. That’s why Bennett is spending much time in the U.S. these days while party leaders in Israel fight over the prosecution of the war in Gaza and the possible war in Lebanon.
Jewish Professors Grapple With Shifting Roles on Campus
On Oct. 10, 2023, Susannah Heschel faced a packed audience in a Dartmouth classroom. Seated alongside Heschel were three other professors from Jewish studies and Middle Eastern studies. It was a Tuesday evening, and 80 people were crowded in the seats before her; a dozen were watching the livestream from an adjacent classroom; another 1,600 joined virtually.

The event, which Heschel organized together with her colleague Tarek El-Ariss, chair of Middle Eastern studies, was a forum for the Dartmouth College community titled “A Discussion on the Horrific Events Unfolding in Israel and Gaza.” Beyond trying to give Dartmouth students the opportunity to learn from experts in the field, Heschel and El-Ariss sought to model the type of thoughtful, respectful dialogue demanded of them as members of an academic institution.

And it worked: Less than two weeks later, the Forward ran an article proclaiming that, alone among our nation’s elite universities, “Dartmouth got it right.” By November, other universities began inviting Heschel and El-Ariss—billed as “Dartmouth experts” on fostering understanding and dialogue—to speak about their work, including Syracuse University, Trinity College, and the University of Virginia. And in February, Rep. Kathy Manning, co-chair of the House Antisemitism Task Force, stated that the Department of Education has been using Dartmouth as a model for other schools in the “best practices in handling discussions on antisemitism and the Middle East.” Over the past year, Heschel’s successful work has cemented her as the foremost expert in combating campus antisemitism through education.

Considering this impressive track record, you’d expect Heschel to be confident—or hopeful, at the very least—about her work as a Jewish professor on Dartmouth’s campus.

Yet that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“We were never trained on how to deal with these things,” Heschel told me in a telephone interview. Despite her nationally recognized success in educating and supporting Dartmouth students, I could hear Heschel’s frustration as she spoke. “We need advice.”

Heschel isn’t the only Jewish professor grappling with seemingly new expectations of her as an educator. Over the summer, I spoke with eight Jewish professors from American universities about their professional and personal experiences on campus since Oct. 7.

Across the board, every professor I spoke to was shocked by the explosion of antisemitism on campuses since Oct. 7. Some work in STEM fields and hadn’t encountered any anti-Israel rhetoric in their academic careers until recently; others, like Heschel, who work in Jewish studies or adjacent fields, have been keenly aware of academia’s dark underside for years.

Most professors reported that Oct. 7’s aftermath significantly changed their professional lives. Yet by far, I discovered, the most dramatic shift has been experienced by professors of Jewish studies. At many universities, the job description for Jewish studies is no longer just teaching Jewish history, culture, or thought—it’s solving antisemitism.


Biden White House hosted leader of Hamas-linked group
President Joe Biden’s White House National Security Council recently hosted the leader of a group with a track record of collaborating in Gaza with Hamas officials, the Washington Examiner confirmed.

The NSC held a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11 with Syrian-American community leaders, including Shadi Zaza, CEO of the Michigan-based organization Rahma Worldwide, according to the NSC and Rahma. Unearthed social media posts and Arabic news sources show Zaza and his group have a history of meeting and partnering with Hamas officials on aid initiatives — including just days before the Palestinian terrorist faction’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel in 2023.

“We have spoken at length about our condemnation of Hamas and the horrible atrocities they committed on Oct. 7,” an NSC spokesperson said.

Speaking to the Washington Examiner, the spokesperson insisted the NSC was not aware of Zaza’s ties to Hamas and that the meeting focused on countering Syria’s Assad regime rather than on Gaza matters.

Still, news of the meeting will likely further incense Republicans in Congress, who have faulted the Biden-Harris administration for, at times, platforming anti-Israel activists who have appeared to sympathize with Hamas and make derogatory comments about Jews. A Syrian-American community leader crafted the September guest list, which was approved by the Secret Service, a source familiar said.

The Secret Service did not return a request for comment.

But the NSC staffers who allowed someone “openly supporting a foreign terrorist organization like Hamas to enter the Eisenhower Executive Office Building are either grossly incompetent or fully support Hamas,” according to a senior GOP Senate aide who works on national security matters.

In August 2024, Rahma Vice President Adib Choiki signed a joint cooperation agreement with Majed Abu Ramadan of Hamas’s Gaza Health Ministry for a blood drive in Gaza, according to Palestinian media. It was hardly the first collaboration with Hamas officials.

Just days before Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Zaza and other Rahma staffers were pictured in Gaza for another aid initiative for low-income families with officials from the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Development, according to images and Palestinian reports. The meetings came around the same time that the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services granted almost $175,000 to Rahma for a vaccine program, federal spending records show.


Sixteen House Democrats vote with Republicans to codify Israel product labeling policy
Sixteen House Democrats voted on Thursday with every Republican in favor of legislation that would codify regulations allowing products produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be labeled as made in Israel.

Supporters said the legislation, which would codify a Trump-era policy, is designed to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Reports have periodically suggested, as recently as April, that the Biden administration is considering reversing the policy.

Proponents of the bill argued that singling out products produced in settlements in the West Bank would make boycotts of such products and the companies that produce them easier. The bill’s opponents said that it is ineffectual political posturing and, at worst, would signal approval for Israel to annex parts of the West Bank.

Democrats who supported the bill, which passed by a 231-189 vote, included Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Don Davis (D-NC), Jared Golden (D-ME), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Susie Lee (D-NV), Grace Meng (D-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), David Scott (D-GA), Darren Soto (D-FL), Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Juan Vargas (D-CA).

“The BDS movement has long targeted goods made in Israeli-controlled areas, sometimes referred to by anti-Israel advocates as the occupied West Bank,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) said on the House floor. “This is about making sure that American citizens know that when they’re purchasing a product in Israeli-controlled Judea and Samaria, they’re purchasing a product made in Israel… it’s about not erasing the existence of Israel in this region of Israel.”

Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) linked the legislation to campus antisemitism, which he said was likewise being driven by the BDS movement.

“American families should have this information in order to buy products that support Israel’s economy, particularly in a time of war,” Smith said. “Conversely, people should know if an item comes from a region controlled by terrorists that kidnapped and killed their fellow Americans.”


Key moments and highlights from the Israeli-American Council Summit 2024
Former President Donald Trump's new strategy for campaigning in front of Jewish audiences was on display Thursday night across Washington, D.C., as he sought to link Vice President Kamala Harris's border policy to rising antisemitism, pro-Palestinian campus protests and the need for the reinstation of his travel ban.

Trump addressed two friendly crowds on Thursday night at a campaign event on antisemitism and at the Israeli-American Council's National Summit. In both speeches, he railed against the Vice President for "importing migrants from terrorist hotspots all over the world," which, according to Trump, led to "armies of jihadists sympathizers marching through the streets of our cities."

These lines of attack were new even two weeks ago when Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership conference in Las Vegas.

Trump's new messaging for targeting Jewish voters comes as his frustration with the low percentage of the Jewish vote he earned in 2016 and 2020 is becoming a fixture in his speeches to Jewish crowds.

According to a poll from the Pew Research Center released earlier this month, Harris has the support of 65% of the American Jewish community.

As seen in both speeches Thursday night, Trump utilized rising antisemitism to drive home his reasoning for restoring his travel ban and "keeping radical Islamic terrorists out of our country."

In his speech at IAC, Trump's message indicated a comparison of pro-Palestinian protestors to terrorist attacks, as he said under his presidency, "We had no terrorist attacks for four years."

"We will deport the foreign Jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters," Trump told the crowd at IAC. "If you hate America, if you want to eliminate Israel, we will throw you out of our country so rapidly."

His new messaging was met with standing ovations.

Trump focused more on the hostages in his speech at the IAC than in his earlier campaign speech, bringing up a released hostage and the father of a hostage on stage with him.

"We're going to get them out; they're going to come out," he said, addressing the hostage families in the crowd. "We pray for you, and somehow it's going to work out. We're going to get it to work out."

Otherwise, Trump kept to his standard messaging, bashing Jewish Democrats and anticipating the demise of the Jewish state without him.

"With four more years of Kamala, you will be faced not just with an attack but with total annihilation. And I hate to say it so much; it's total annihilation. That's what you're talking about," Trump said. " And I've said long and loud, anybody, and especially over the last few years, anybody who's Jewish, and loves being Jewish and loves Israel, is a fool if they vote for a Democrat."

To laughter in the ballroom, Trump said Harris makes Obama "look like he loved Israel by comparison."

"With your vote, we will reject anti-semitism in our schools, reject it in our foreign policy. We will reject it in our immigration system," Trump said. "But all of that starts with rejecting Kamala Harris at the ballot box this election."


Trump pitches Jewish voters: ‘Those votes may be necessary for us to win’
Former President Donald Trump made a pitch to Jewish voters on Thursday, touting his pro-Israel record, and saying that they could be critical to the 2024 election.

Addressing the Israeli-American Council’s annual summit in Washington, D.C., Trump joked about the advantage that Democrats enjoyed among Jews at the polls in 2016 and 2020, despite his support for the Jewish state and his daughter, son-in-law and three of his grandchildren being Jewish.

“I was the best friend Israel ever had,” he said. “In 2020 now, I’ve done all these things. Now Jewish people have no excuse. I got 29%. I went from 25% to 29%—think of that. Honestly, you didn’t treat yourselves well.”

Trump said polling currently showed him with support from “about 40%” of the Jewish populace. A Pew poll earlier this month showed that 34% of American Jews support Trump.

“Those votes may be necessary for us to win,” he said.

“I’ll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can: I wasn’t treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish,” he continued. “Do they know what the hell is happening? If I don’t win this election—and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens—because at 40%, that means 60% of the people voting for the enemy.”

Trump said if he doesn’t win, Israel “will cease to exist within two years.”

The former president mixed lines he has repeatedly used from his stump speeches with elements intended for a Jewish and Israeli audience.

He cited moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries as among the pro-Israel accomplishments of his administration.

He also said that he supported Israel’s right to win its war on terrorism, but “it has to win it fast.”

Trump noted the remaining 101 hostages still being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip after being kidnapped during the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7. He recognized those families attending the summit and asked for them to stand up to a round of applause.

He called Dedi Simchi, whose Israel Defense Forces paratrooper son Guy was killed fighting Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival, and Andrey Kozlov, who was freed from Hamas captivity in an IDF rescue mission in Gaza after eight months in captivity, up to the stage.

“He’s got more courage than I have,” Trump said of Koslov.
AJC, ADL blast Trump’s threatening comments on the Jewish vote
In rare statements on the presidential election, the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League issued statements on Friday morning condemning former President Donald Trump’s comments on Thursday evening about the Jewish vote.

Trump said Thursday evening that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with that if” he loses the election “because at 40% [Jewish support] that means 60% are voting for the enemy.”

The AJC, highlighting that the Jewish population makes up just 2% of the U.S. population, said that Jewish voters “cannot and should not be blamed for the outcome of the election. Setting up anyone to say ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous. Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.”

The AJC also argued that “none of us, by supporting the candidate we choose, is ‘voting for the enemy,’” linking such language to “a time of rising threats of political violence,” including the two assassination attempts targeting Trump.

“Both candidates should work to earn the support of our community based on policy,” the statement concluded. “But let’s not make this election and its outcome about the Jews.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said that Trump had “undermined” his condemnations of antisemitism last night “by then employing numerous antisemitic tropes and anti-Jewish stereotypes — including rampant accusations of dual loyalty.”

Greenblatt added that “Preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss… increases their sense of alienation in a moment of vulnerability when right-wing extremists and left-wing antizionists continually demonize and slander Jews.”


GOP candidate in North Carolina denies calling himself ‘black NAZI’ on porn site forum
North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson vowed on Thursday to remain in the race despite a CNN report that he posted strongly worded racial and sexual comments on an online message board, saying he won’t be forced out by “salacious tabloid lies.”

Robinson, the sitting lieutenant governor who decisively won his GOP gubernatorial primary in March, has been trailing in several recent polls to Democratic nominee Josh Stein, the current attorney general.

“We are staying in this race. We are in it to win it,” Robinson said in a video posted Thursday on the social media platform X. “And we know that with your help, we will.”

In the video, Robinson referenced a story that he said CNN was running, but he didn’t give details.

“Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story — those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he said. “You know my words. You know my character.”

The CNN report describes a series of racial and sexual comments Robinson allegedly posted on the message board of a pornography website more than a decade ago.
Republican candidate’s antisemitic social media costing the party in Washington state swing seat
A candidate for the Washington Statehouse in a hotly contested purple district posted an antisemitic image and compared COVID protocols to Nazi Germany, part of a series of bizarre and extreme posts on social media.

In March, Carrie Kennedy, the GOP nominee in Washington’s 10th House District, shared an image on Facebook that features figures with the labels “Rothschild,” “J.P. Morgan,” “Goldman Sachs,” “Federal Reserve,” “Bank of England,” “[Janet] Yellen,” “[Ben] Bernanke” and “[Alan] Greenspan,” each name alongside a Star of David. Another graphic in the meme reads “SS Int Jewry.”

Yellen, the Treasury secretary, and Bernanke and Greenspan, both former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, are Jewish, as is the Rothschild family, which features prominently in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The figures are superimposed on a stack of gold bars and alongside a sea of money, in which other figures are drowning, alongside a burning map of the United States. The image also features what appears to be a pool of blood in the background.

The meme includes a caption describing a strategy of seeking social and economic collapse. The post, and other elements of Kennedy’s online history, were first reported by the Everett Herald, a local paper, on Saturday.

Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 10th District, located north of Seattle, has been a key target for Washington Republicans. The incumbent, Democratic state Rep. Clyde Shavers, won election by less than 300 votes in 2022. Kennedy beat a more moderate Republican in the primary race who was backed by a PAC linked to Statehouse Republicans with tens of thousands of dollars in outside spending. Kennedy has accused the institutional GOP of abandoning her campaign.

In 2021, Kennedy posted on Facebook comparing COVID protocols to the Nazi regime, writing “My wise 83 yr yng mom said, this is what Hitler did when he started! Wonder why Covid targeted Seniors?”

And in 2022, she posted “my kid spent months learning about AnneFrank in high school,” followed by a shrugging emoji. While Kennedy’s meaning is unclear, several comments under her post suggest that the Holocaust, or Frank’s story, were fabricated.
Greens MP to tour Sydney Jewish Museum and donate funds after offensive ‘tentacles’ trope
New South Wales Greens MP Jenny Leong will visit the Sydney Jewish Museum and has donated $4,000 after a complaint was lodged with the Australian Human Rights Commission over comments she made about Jewish lobby groups last year.

Leong apologised and said she did not intend to reference an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as an octopus after footage emerged of comments she made at a Palestine Justice Movement forum in Sydney in December 2023.

The comments were condemned by Jewish groups and prompted the premier, Chris Minns, to warn parliamentarians about sowing division in the community.



After the comments were made public in February, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said that Leong’s remarks were “offensive”.

Days after the story broke, a member of the community lodged a complaint of racial vilification against Jewish people with the human rights commission. The parties went through a conciliation process and reached a settlement earlier this week.

Leong agreed to attend a free guided tour of the Jewish museum and donate $2,000 to the museum – without admitting liability.
House passes End Woke Higher Education Act with bipartisan support
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the End Woke Higher Education Act, H.R. 3724, on Thursday with a vote of 213-201.

The legislation combined Rep. Burgess Owens’s (R-Utah) Accreditation for College Excellence Act and Rep. Brandon Williams’s (R-N.Y.) Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act. These respective bills sought to prevent university accreditors from forcing schools to submit to a political or partisan ideology and to stop them from suppressing the rights of free speech.

Four Democrats voted for the act’s passage: Reps. Don Davis (D-N.C.), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Mary Sattler Peltola (D-Alaska) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.).

Ahead of the vote, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) delivered a speech on what she described as “three conservative statements—to express three truths—that would otherwise be punishable offenses on today’s college campuses.”

Academic institutions that fail to abide by the legislation’s free speech protections for students could lose government funding. The bill also requires colleges to educate students about First Amendment rights and annually disclose free speech policies. It protects religious colleges by preventing government accreditors from disrupting religious adherence, practices or codes of conduct.

“This is not the education system that our founders envisioned in their quest for America to become a more perfect union,” Owens wrote following his bill’s passage. “The left’s attacks on the academic freedom and constitutional rights of America’s colleges and universities end today.”
Here I Am With Shai Davi: From disengaged student to passionate #jewish activist | EP 10 Gabi Schiller
Welcome to the 10th 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 episode of 'Here I Am With Shai Davidai,' Gabi Schiller shares her background, describing herself as a loud and confrontational Jew, especially when encountering antisemitism. She recounts her journey into activism, which was catalyzed by the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021. This event made her realize the extent of hatred towards Israel and Jews, prompting her to become more involved in social media activism and eventually join the organization Stand With Us as an international senior educator.

Gabi discusses her upbringing in a conservative Jewish household and her initial disconnection from her Jewish identity, which changed after witnessing antisemitism firsthand. She emphasizes the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls in affirming the Jewish historical connection to Israel. Gabi also talks about her role at Stand With Us, where she works with high school students to combat antisemitism and educate them about Jewish history and Israel.

The conversation shifts to the challenges faced by Jewish students in high schools and colleges, highlighting incidents of antisemitism and the lack of adequate responses from school administrations. Gabi stresses the importance of schools being willing to engage in dialogue and adopt policies to protect Jewish students. She also shares her frustration with anti-Zionist Jews, whom she feels betray their community by aligning with anti-Israel sentiments.

Gabi reflects on the emotional impact of witnessing antisemitic incidents, particularly a disturbing event at Columbia University where Jewish students were harassed. She expresses her fear and horror at the parallels to historical antisemitism and the importance of standing up against such hatred. The episode concludes with Gabi discussing her social media activism under the name Yehuda Amram, aiming to represent and speak for many Jews who share her sentiments. She also highlights the importance of Jewish symbols and solidarity in the face of rising antisemitism.




My French Teacher Was Beloved for 25 Years. Then She Was Asked About Hijabs.
At The Spence School, a tony all-girls private institution on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Anne Protopappas was larger than life. “Bonjour!” she’d smile to students, wearing her quintessentially French red lipstick with Plato tucked under one arm and croissants in the other to offer her next class.

For a quarter of a century, generations of young Spence women adored our “Madame Proto.” She spearheaded school trips to China and Japan, launched a language and culture institute, revived the Model United Nations Club, advised the yearbook staff, developed a debate team, and offered special “salon” classes to parents and alumnae. Part Vietnamese, part Greek, and part French, she speaks five languages. When I was at Spence from 2006 to 2019, there was no teacher I admired more. She was the only faculty member in the language department to receive three yearbook dedications and four recorded money donations to the school in her name.

But in February, she was fired. Unable to find another teaching job, she is suing the school, its trustees, and its two top officials, Head of School Felicia Wilks and Director of Teaching and Learning Eric Zahler. In the lawsuit, filed earlier this month in New York State Supreme Court, Protopappas and her attorney, Sean Dweck, claim she was the victim of “employment discrimination based upon age, race/national origin” and “retaliation after lodging complaints about the discriminatory practices at the school.” What’s more, they argue, after a student took issue with the way Protopappas, 62, conducted a class, Spence deprived her of the due process that would have allowed her to defend herself.

“I never thought that I would pay such a high price for practicing and teaching the skill of free and responsible expression and independence of mind at a school that I picked for its open-mindedness twenty-five years ago,” Protopappas told me. “I have done nothing but serve this school.”

Protopappas’s firing stems from a May 2023 incident that took place in her Advanced French class, which was being taken by eight Spence seniors. Out of the blue, according to the complaint, one student asked, “Why did France ban the hijab?”

Protopappas said she responded by thanking the student and then giving the class some background about why the French law banning hijabs and all other visible religious symbols in public K-12 schools was in accordance with the country’s belief in secularism, or laïcité. She said she invited the class to consider the pros and cons of this law, which came into being after a nationwide debate in which some Muslim women advocated to protect young students from family pressures to wear the veil.

According to Protopappas’s complaint, the student who had asked the question, Sarai Wilks, “unexpectedly burst out of anger and displayed an uncharacteristically emotional and intensely personal reaction to the discussion, focusing on how unfair the French law was to her friend from her former school on the West Coast who wore the hijab.”


Pro-Israel teacher targeted by Queens high school students during Gaza protest sues Department of Education for allowing antisemitism
A Jewish teacher who was targeted during a protest at a Queens high school over her support of Israel is suing New York City for failing to protect her and allowing antisemitic harassment — despite advance notice of the demonstration.

Karen Marder, who continues to teach at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, said its former principal and the broader public school system violated her civil rights by permitting antisemitic harassment and created a hostile work environment.

“Ms. Marder remains deeply committed to her students and the Hillcrest High School community, despite the distressing events that took place,” said attorney Michael Chessa. “While she continues to seek justice through her lawsuit, her primary focus is on fostering an inclusive environment and promoting open dialogue to counter misinformation and intolerance. She will not be deterred from her mission to serve and support the school.”

The lawsuit, filed early last week in a Queens trial court, included new details of arguably the most high-profile conflict of last year, as the New York City public schools struggled to respond to tensions stemming from the Israel-Hamas war.

Marder attended a pro-Israel rally two days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and later posted a photo of herself holding a sign saying “I stand with Israel” on Facebook, according to the lawsuit. More than a month later, the photo was being shared on social media by students, who were planning a protest Nov. 20.

The teacher in court documents said she notified the school administration, who informed her they would log the threats she received. A day later, she emailed then-Principal Scott Milzcewski and others expressing concern for her safety but received no response.

The day of the protest, Marder met with Milzcewski — but said “no concrete measures” were taken to protect her. Milzcewski after the incident was reassigned to the Education Department’s central offices to manage teacher development and evaluation.

“The DOE’s response was inadequate and focused more on addressing baseless allegations against [Marder] rather than ensuring her safety,” reads the lawsuit, seeking monetary damages for her trauma.

By third period, she was called into the assistant principal’s office, where anti-terrorism, NYPD and school safety personnel interviewed her, according to the lawsuit. As the school day continued, she watched on monitors as students began gathering outside her classroom.


'I HAVE FAILED THEM'USYD vice chancellor sorry over antisemitism
Speaking to a Senate inquiry into antisemitism on campus, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney Mark Scott said it was unacceptable Jewish students were made to feel “unsafe” during an eight-week pro-Palestinian encampment protest and said both he and the university had “failed” students and staff.

“Yes, I have failed them and the university’s failed them,” Scott told the inquiry.

“I’ve read the complaints that have been made to the university and all those shared in submissions to this inquiry And to the special envoy, and the testimonials are heartbreaking and unacceptable.

“For that I am sorry. No one should feel at risk, unsafe or unwelcome at any place of learning, and no one should feel the need to hide their identity or stay away from classrooms or campuses.”

Scott said he regretted that he did not communicate in advance with the Jewish community an agreement he had made with the Muslim students association to end the pro-Palestine protest encampment.

“I realise there is a lot of work to do to win back the trust and confidence of the university’s Jewish community, and I am committed to doing that.”

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) vice-president Zac Morris singled out the university and its vice chancellor for criticism at the inquiry, saying of a meeting with Professor Scott: “His chief of staff had to apologise for his behaviour as soon as he left the office.”

“What we’ve been seeing at the University of Sydney has been problematic for a long time,” he said.

The opposition’s education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said Prof Scott had failed in his leadership, and questioned why he didn’t ban camping on the campuses and remove the encampments earlier.
Testimonies on campus antisemitism underway
Zionist Federation of Australia CEO Alon Cassuto giving evidence.

There is a “complete lack of trust” on the part of Jewish students and staff that their institutions have their safety as a priority, Zionist Federation of Australia CEO Alon Cassuto told the Senate committee looking into a bill for a judicial enquiry on antisemitism on campus on Friday.

Giving his opening statement to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, Cassuto said no other minority would be expected to put up with the “sheer scale of hatred” Jewish students and staff have experienced on campuses.

“What distinguishes the universities that managed the situation effectively, from those that did not, is strong leadership,” he said.

“Allowing a UK-listed terrorist organisation and extremist group, Hizb Ut-Tahrir, on campus to participate in the protests at USYD is not strong leadership.

“Overturning the expulsion of an ANU student who declared on ABC Radio that Hamas – a terrorist organisation – “deserves our unconditional support” – is not strong leadership.

“Universities are now responsible for fostering an environment on campuses where students have been given the greenlight to do or say whatever they want with zero consequences.”

While he said some may argue a judicial inquiry isn’t needed, “The lived experiences of Jewish students and staff tell a different, far more troubling story.

“The only way to confront this shameful stain on our academic institutions is through a judicial inquiry with royal commission-like powers—for the sake of both our universities and their Jewish students and staff,” Cassuto said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) co-CEO Peter Wertheim said even the announcement of a judicial enquiry “will absolutely change the atmospherics” and “create the right cultural environment”.

It would “act as a spur” to perhaps expand the powers of the recently announced National Student Ombudsman, lead to better complaints procedures, a better understanding of what antisemitism is and possibly education programs for administrators to better understand the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

“All of those things are helpful, but they will not address the underlying issue of the broader legal and other constraints under which universities operate. And that is for an inquiry,” Wertheim said.

ECAJ head of legal Simone Abel added, “We’ve, in fact, already seen anecdotally, just the fact of this Senate inquiry has resulted in more responsiveness from universities around some of the issues that have been raised.
'Death to the US': Anti-Israel Protesters at UNC Vandalize ROTC Building, Fraternity Brothers Clean Up After Them
Anti-Israel protesters at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill vandalized the school's ROTC Naval Armory and other campus buildings as part of a Thursday "Walk Out for the West Bank" event, causing "significant damage," the school said in a statement.

The event, organized by the school's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and other anti-Israel groups, began at the steps of the university library. From there, anti-Israel student activists "began moving around the center of campus and disrupted operations of the University," according to the school.

"They entered at least nine academic buildings across campus shouting and attempting to disrupt classes. They also vandalized the interior and exterior of buildings along their way with spray paint and permanent markers," UNC said in a campus update. "They caused significant damage throughout multiple buildings. The group then gathered at the ROTC Naval Armory building, which is included in the National Register of Historic Places and proceeded to damage the exterior with spray paint."

Photos of the ordeal showed slogans such as "Israel Bombs, USA Pays," "Burn, Riot," "Death to the US," and "Death to UNC" spray painted on the ROTC building and other campus buildings. At one point, student protesters raised a Palestinian flag at the front of the ROTC building. Members of various UNC fraternities assembled to clean up the mess and re-raise the American flag.


'I Know It Wasn't Me, But I'm Really Sorry': New Columbia President Apologizes for Cops Clearing Encampment
Columbia University's new interim president, Katrina Armstrong, apologized for the "harm" caused by police sweeps used to clear unruly and illegal encampments and to remove students who had broken into and occupied a campus building in the spring. "I know it wasn't me, but I'm really sorry," she said.

In an interview with the Columbia Daily Spectator, the school's student newspaper, Armstrong asked the paper to "just let everybody know who was hurt by that, that I'm just incredibly sorry."

"I know that this is tricky for me to say, but I do understand that I sit in this job, right. And so if you could just let everybody know who was hurt by that, that I'm just incredibly sorry," she said. "I know it wasn't me, but I'm really sorry. … I saw it, and I'm really sorry."

Armstrong took over as Columbia's interim president following Minouche Shafik's abrupt resignation in August, which came following mounting pressure from both Jewish students angered by the encampment chaos and anti-Israel activists who opposed Shafik's decision to use police to restore order. Shafik spent days during the height of the encampment negotiating with student protest leaders, but the effort proved fruitless.

Armstrong's interview with the student newspaper, her first since taking over for Shafik, suggests she is poised to side with the activists as Columbia encounters a fresh wave of protests during the new school year.

On the first day of classes, pro-Hamas students, using keffiyehs to cover their faces, blocked an entrance to campus, praised Hamas, vandalized a statue, and clashed with police. One day later, they gathered outside former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's "sham class" to protest her "war crimes."

In addition to her role as interim president, Armstrong serves as CEO of Columbia's Irving Medical Center. Asked by the Daily Spectator whether she would discuss divestment from Israel with student protesters, Armstrong pledge to develop "models for 'meaningful engagement' to 'really bring us together and think about what we want to be.'"


U of O antisemitism adviser apologizes, resigns for posts on device explosions
The University of Ottawa's special adviser on antisemitism has resigned after fewer than three months in the role, saying his social media posts about the deadly device explosions across Lebanon had hurt people and affected his ability to do that job.

Artur Wilczynski, a senior adviser at the university's graduate school of public and international affairs and a decorated former senior public servant, posted and replied several times on X, formerly known as Twitter, as the attacks broke out Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday, at least 12 people were killed, including two children, with some 2,800 people wounded when hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members began detonating wherever they happened to be — in homes, cars, at grocery stores and in cafés.

The following day, in a second wave of attacks, at least 20 people were killed and 450 were wounded when walkie-talkies and solar equipment used by Hezbollah exploded in Beirut and multiple parts of Lebanon.

Although Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement, it's widely believed that intelligence officials from the country were responsible for the attacks.

Wilczynski drew anger online for characterizing what happened as "brilliant," posting, "today's targeting of Hezbollah operatives was brilliant. It struck a major blow against a terror group that has fired thousands of rockets against civilians all while the useless UN mission in Lebanon stands by."

He later said Wednesday evening that by "brilliant" he meant the sophistication involved in planning, adding that "the loss of innocent lives in any conflict is abhorrent and must be avoided."
From the River to the Sea ... the water runs red
Introduction
In the children’s section of all good bookstores in South Africa, you will find a brightly covered book titled “From the River to the Sea: A colouring book”. The illustrator and public face of the book is Nathi Ngubane, an engaging Soweto based cartoonist, who does work for Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation and also the Daily Maverick. The publisher is Social Bandit Media which is run by Azad Essa, a former Al Jazeera journalist currently working for Middle East Eye.

The book, which first came out in February, seeks to tap into the outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinian people, fuelled by the horrendous death and destruction the world has witnessed in Gaza since October 7th 2023. It attracted public attention in June after the South African Jewish Board of Deputies objected to it, but Exclusive Books said that it could find nothing “offensive” in it; and the whole controversy generated considerable publicity, and much sympathetic press coverage, for the work. By early July the book had sold 10 000 copies within South Africa.

The book received a further boost when the Daily Maverick’s newspaper, DM168, devoted its Maverickids section to promoting the book across a four-page spread. According to Maverickids the book “teaches children about the history of Palestine, its culture and people, and also helps young minds to understand what is happening in the Israel-Palestine conflict” and, also, “speaks about the meaning of peace and freedom for all across the world.” The supplement also reproduced an image from the book – of a young Gazan girl who aspires to be a journalist - which it encouraged children to colour in and send in.

The book is both professionally and cleverly done. Though the title suggests a certain agenda not particularly favourable to the survival of the State of Israel, it keeps the sort of red flags that would be obvious to a South African reader well out of sight. For the ordinary purchaser, the book could well be taken as innocent and well-intentioned as the Daily Maverick makes it out to be.


Georgetown University To Host Convicted PFLP Terrorist, Hamas Sympathizers, And Oct. 7 Apologists at Qatar Conference
The head of an Israel-designated terrorist organization, a former Hamas official, and Hamas apologists are among the dozens of anti-Israel advocates scheduled to speak at a Georgetown University conference in Qatar running Friday through Sunday, a Washington Free Beacon review has found.

The speakers at the "Reimagining Palestine" event will discuss the "ideological shifts" of Zionism, "art as resistance," and "anti-colonial struggles," and will engage in "dialogue that challenges the status quo," according to the Doha event’s website. Among the nearly 70 scholars is Shawan Jabarin, a former senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the general director of the Al-Haq organization, an Israeli-designated terrorist group. Another, Wadah Khanfar, was a local Hamas leader in Sudan.

As a senior PFLP operative, Jabarin was convicted in 1985 and was sentenced to 24 months in prison for recruiting for the terrorist group. In 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court described him as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for serving with Al-Haq while moonlighting with the PFLP, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Al-Haq bills itself as a human rights group focused on violations in Gaza. Israel designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2021, labeling it "an inseparable arm" of the PFLP that operates "on its behalf and upon its instructions as part of the terror organization's struggle against Israel."

Another Al-Haq official, Wesam Ahmad, is also set to speak at the Georgetown conference in Doha. He has described Israel as "a colonial project from the very beginning."

The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, described Khanfar in 2007 as "one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas Office in Sudan," according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Raya Media Network, a Palestinian news outlet, similarly reported that Khanfar held a local leadership position in Hamas in the 1990s.

Khanfar, who served as Al Jazeera Media Network’s director general for five years before abruptly resigning in 2011, said Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack made "great achievements at the global level." He said it "came at the perfect moment for a radical and real shift in the path of struggle and liberation," adding that the attack would be seen "as the beginning of the end, leading the Palestinian cause to something different."

Georgetown established its Qatar campus in 2005 "to extend its international presence to an important region of the world," according to university president John J. DeGioia. The project was funded and coordinated by the Qatar Foundation, a state-controlled entity tasked with promoting the country’s interests. The foundation has significant influence over the Doha campus, shaping curriculum goals and faculty recruitment.


BBC is still actively employing Hamas members, Trevor Asserson says
The BBC is still actively employing members of Hamas, attorney Trevor Asserson told Tamar Uriel-Beeri on The Jerusalem Post Podcast.

Asserson recently released a detailed 200-page report detailing the anti-Israel bias of the BBC's news reporting of the Israel-Hamas War, which was first covered by the Telegraph.

"We looked at the things they should be talking about that they have omitted, and we looked at the things they did say and said in a very biased way," he explained.

"We hired lawyers who were trained to try to look at evidence in a way that could come before a court," Asserson said of the methodology. "We specifically asked them to read articles and then to take detailed notes." The goal was to see if it would take an average fair-minded but ignorant audience and lead them into liking Israelis and disliking Palestinians, or into liking Palestinians and disliking Israelis, or leave them neutral.

One of the big editorial leanings the BBC seems to be having with its news coverage is that it is focusing more on the human tragedies happening in Gaza.

"The BBC really have made their reporting of this war a reporting of civilian casualties," Asserson said. "That is clearly part of the story, and it's a tragic part of the story, but it's not the only part of the story."

But another aspect they looked at in this report was that BBC actively employed Hamas members.

"We looked at their backgrounds and found they were Hamas supporters or even Hamas members," Asserson said. "The BBC should not be giving a platform to terrorists, and if they do at all, they should be telling the audience these people are Hamas members or supporters."
Israeli mother exposes Arab incitement, criminality
Ayelet Lash foresaw disaster even before Oct. 7. A mother of five whose day job is teaching high school students with special needs, she moonlights as an online activist.

She’s demonstrated a knack for the role, earning several appearances on Israeli media and unwanted attention from the Israeli police.

In the last four years, police have interrogated Lash three times at the behest of the State Attorney’s Office.

She thinks the investigations were fishing expeditions in the hope of charging her with racism and incitement. Lash says the police went through countless posts of hers and challenged her on absurd items. One was a photoshopped picture of a rabbit wearing a keffiyeh. She says the fact that all the investigations were dropped shows that they could turn up nothing.

She is currently under investigation by Israel’s Civil Service Commission.

Post-Oct. 7, she started looking at the social media of her Arab neighbors in Judea and Samaria where she lives. She uncovered a cesspool of terrorist and criminal activity carried on under the noses of Israeli security forces.

Lash uncovered thieving, incitement and terrorist training with relative ease, raising the question: Where are the Israeli army, police and intelligence services?

Lash recently spoke with JNS.


Lessons from the Nazi hunter
Sept. 20 marks 19 years since Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor and legendary Nazi hunter, passed away. Wiesenthal represented the long arm of the Jewish people, and in his book Murderers Among Us, he described how he tracked down more than 800 Nazis.

He is most famous for his help in finding mass murderer Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960. Eichmann was hanged in Israel on June 1, 1962. Wiesenthal is also responsible for bringing Franz Stangl, commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, to justice. He also located Hermine Braunsteiner, “the mare of Majdanek,” so named because she used to kick her victims to death with her steel-toed boots. She had become an American citizen and was living in Queens, N.Y., until Wiesenthal ensured she was brought to justice.

Wiesenthal taught us invaluable lessons.

The State of Israel carries on his legacy. Since Oct. 7, Israel has been tracking down each and every person involved in the savage massacre, rape and abduction of innocent Jews on that day. It is estimated that at least 6,000 Gazans attacked Israel. Israel’s intelligence forces, through lengthy investigations, have identified almost every terrorist involved in the brutality and barbarism. Hamas’s filming of their assault has helped determine the perpetrators. The capture of Hamas computers has helped as well. Just as Wiesenthal hunted down the Nazis, Israel is doing the same against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.

The international community has not given Israel the credit it deserves for removing evil from the world. If Israel weren’t taking care of business, these very same terrorists would spread to U.S. shores.
How I outed Roald Dahl as a venomous antisemite
Of all the things I thought might happen in my life, my name being spoken by a film star at the Royal Court Theatre wasn’t high on the list. But it’s going to happen tonight, and for many nights to come. The actor is John Lithgow, the play is Giant, by Mark Rosenblatt, and at the epicentre is the author and rabid antisemite Roald Dahl.

My connection goes back to 1983 when as a very young journalist working for the New Statesman, I was asked to interview Dahl after he’d written a venomous article in the Literary Review. His piece was a review of a book called God Cried, an account of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. But rather than an objective discussion he wrote of “a race of people” who had “switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers”, and that the US was “so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions” that “they dare not defy” Israel. It’s sobering to realise that as repugnant as these comments were, today they may well go completely unchallenged. Not by me, however, now or then.

When I initially asked Dahl for an interview he was gracious and willing. The actual telephone interview began with small talk, and I told him I was a fan of his work. Then, sure that he’d make some sort of apology about the article or explain that he’d let his baser emotions run amok, I asked about what he’d written. With no change of tone, he began, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews.” And then, “I mean, there’s always a reason why ‘anti-anything’ crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

I was in my early 20s, just out of university, and frankly a little out of my depth. I wondered if I’d misheard him, or even if this was obscure satire. He confirmed that I hadn’t, that he meant it, and repeated it to make sure. I paused, gathered my thoughts, and then explained that three of my grandparents were Jewish and that what he’d just said was stupid and repulsive. It was as though I hadn’t spoken, hadn’t responded. He simply ignored me and continued, with some nonsense about how he’d fought in the Second World War and that he and his friends never saw any Jewish soldiers.

I stopped him and said they couldn’t have looked very hard because there were hundreds of thousands, in all the allied armies, navies and air forces. Many were heroes and my grandpa, a Whitechapel tailor before the war, won medals fighting in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Jewish men and women were, I continued, probably over-represented in the armed forces.


Israeli study uncovers cancer cell findings that may advance treatment for the disease
Cancer cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes, known as aneuploid cells, were extensively examined, uncovering findings that may advance cancer treatment, two studies from Tel Aviv University and the European Institute of Oncology showed.

The researchers found that a significant number of cancer cells are aneuploid, and that they are more vulnerable than healthy cells. They also discovered that aneuploidy increases the sensitivity of cancer cells to certain anticancer drugs, potentially leading to new strategies for targeting and eliminating tumors.

“In our studies, we found that aneuploidy increases the sensitivity of cancer cells to certain types of anticancer drugs,” the researchers stated.

The studies were conducted by Prof. Uri Ben-David and doctoral student Johanna Zerbib from Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Prof. Stefano Santaguida and doctoral student Marica Rosaria Ippolito from the University of Milan, along with teams from Israel, Italy, the USA, and Germany. Their research resulted in two articles published in the journals Cancer Discovery and Nature Communications.

Prof. Ben-David explained that healthy human cells have 46 chromosomes, while cancer cells often exhibit an abnormal number due to improper division, a condition known as aneuploidy.

He believes that identifying specific vulnerabilities in aneuploid cells could lead to targeted cancer treatments that spare healthy cells.

Previous studies
Three years ago, Prof. Ben-David's team published a study classifying approximately 2,000 malignant cells by their aneuploidy levels and assessing their responses to various treatments. However, this study had limitations because the cells came from different cancer types, making it difficult to isolate the effects of aneuploidy from other genetic differences.

In their new study, the researchers used genetically identical human cell cultures to investigate aneuploidy. They introduced a substance that disrupted chromosome separation, creating cells with varying levels of aneuploidy.

This setup allowed for a focused examination of aneuploidy’s effects through DNA and RNA sequencing, protein level measurement, drug response testing on 6,000 drugs, and CRISPR screening to identify essential genes.

They created a comprehensive database of aneuploid cell characteristics, which could aid in future research and the development of biomarkers to predict cancer patients' responses to treatments.
Israeli pilot whose plane was hijacked in 1968 talks Hamas hostage crisis
“I can’t say a bad word about the families of the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, since whenever they speak, they speak from the heart,” said Avner Slapak, himself a former captive, as he reclines in his chair.

“I remember how my father said to me, when I returned from captivity, that he had tried everything in his power to get me back.

“We were 12 men who were taken captive and only one of us spoke about the possibility of a prisoner exchange. All the others, including me, agreed that the bastards who had abducted us did not deserve the prize of having even a single murderer released in return for us.

“All the time we said, ‘the government of Israel will ensure that we are released,'” he recalled.

Slapak, now 82 years old, was one of those abducted in 1968 from an El Al plane that was forced to land in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. He was held, together with an additional 11 Israelis, for 39 days, until the Israeli government decided to release 24 terrorists “with no blood on their hands” in exchange for their return, thus bringing to an end to the first airplane hijacking resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the summer of 1968, Slapak, a former Israeli Air Force fighter pilot who saw action in the 1967 Six-Day War, was a trainee El Al pilot. On July 22, he joined the crew of flight LY426 from London to Israel via Rome. The captain was Oded Abarbanel, and the first officer was Maj. (res.) Maoz Poraz, who had served in Slapak’s IAF squadron.

Besides the armed terrorist who burst into the cockpit, there were two more members of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine among the passengers, Slapak said.

Once the plane landed in Algeria, the Palestinian terrorists took a back seat and handed the reins over to the Algerian security police. The women and children on board, along with the foreign nationals, were released, and the hijackers kept the remaining 12 Israelis—seven crew members and five passengers—hostage as bargaining chips for the release of terrorists held in Israel.
Israel alone, Israel unbowed
“He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin/He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.” So sang Bob Dylan on his buoyant 1983 album track “Neighborhood Bully,” the title of which is an ironic take on how much of the world views the State of Israel and the nation—as Dylan observed, “always on trial, just for being born”—that built it.

I remembered Dylan’s lyrics, which sadly have lost none of their currency four decades later, while I was reading the latest book by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, Israel Alone. Just as Dylan conveys Israel’s grit in fighting back despite its stark isolation and its transformation by its enemies from victim into predator, Lévy’s book, sparked by the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7 last year, communicates much the same spirit.

Unphased by the fact that he is writing about a rapidly moving target, the book is vintage Lévy, casually invoking thinkers and writers from Rashi to Pascal, from Hegel to Louis Aragon, as he dives into the Middle Eastern fray to then rise above it with his telling insights.

The book begins with Lévy’s arrival in Israel one day after the pogrom, which he defines as an “Event.” Like the “Black Swan” episodes that occasionally plague financial markets—unpredictable, unexpected and little-understood developments that can send the price of equities and assets crashing downwards—no one sees an “Event” coming, Lévy explains, “nor even its silent stirrings.” But once an “Event” manifests, it violently and rudely changes the future, tearing up the preconceptions we hold that give us comfort and a degree of certainty.

For Jews, both in Israel and outside, Oct. 7 marked a dramatic rupture with the concept of “Never Again” that had prevailed since the late 1940s, when the Jewish people emerged from the Holocaust still alive and achieved independence in our ancestral homeland. In the intervening decades, we garnered both pride and strength from the Israel Defense Forces in its spectacular defense of the country against a succession of invasions by Arab armies, as well as its spectacular one-off operations, notably the rescue of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976 (I can still the hear the shrieks of joy from the kitchen of my grandparent’s London home when my grandfather picked up the paper and read the headline, dashing to the room where my brother and I were sleeping to break the news.)

Oct. 7 was the exact opposite. We watched with disbelief, sickness in our hearts, as the Hamas rapists and murderers ripped their way into Israel, crashing through a border that we had thought to be impenetrable. Suddenly, Israel seemed as small as it actually is and the IDF a shadow of what we had believed it to be. Centuries of Jewish suffering merged into one moment, as though the Cossacks and the Nazi Einsatzgruppen had traveled into our own time, joining with the Arab armies that had failed time and again over the previous eight decades to drive the Jews into the sea. That repellent ambition had, until that day, sounded like an empty slogan coined by perennial losers. Now, amid the rapes and mutilations and burning homes and sundry other cruelties, it seemed like our new reality.

Lévy says, and I agree with him, that he never seriously thought that Israel was faced with annihilation on that terrible morning. But, he adds, there is that “geosymbolic space that is no less influential in determining how people stand in the world”—a space where political realism and its calculations is dislodged by fear and memory. “October 7,” he writes, “marks the alignment, for the worse, of Israel with the diaspora.” Much later on, he reveals his love of “this little world of people stranded on the tiny strip of land they finally received, three-quarters of a century ago, left there by a West and by a larger world wet with the rivers of Jewish blood spilled into the torrent of centuries.”




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