Tuesday, September 24, 2024

09/24 Links Pt2: A Survivor’s Last Day; Biden makes valedictory UNGA speech; The Disgraceful and Disgraced Robert Malley; How Harvard Divinity Teaches Hate

From Ian:

‘The center has held’: Biden makes valedictory UNGA speech
U.S. President Joe Biden delivered his final address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, describing to world leaders the “sweep of history” he has seen over the course of his career as an elected official.

The 81-year-old touted his accomplishments in office while noting that his half-century of involvement in American foreign affairs was drawing to a close.

“I was first elected to office in the United States of America as a U.S. senator in 1972,” Biden said. “Back then, we were living through an inflection point, a moment of tension and uncertainty.”

“I truly believe we’re in another inflection point in world history,” he said.

Biden devoted about three minutes of his nearly 25-minute-long speech to the Middle East, Israel and Gaza.

Speaking just days before the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, he called on world leaders not to “flinch from the horrors” of that day.

“Any country would have the right and responsibility to ensure that such an attack could never happen again,” Biden said. “Thousands of armed Hamas terrorists invaded a sovereign state, slaughtering and massacring more than 1,200 people, including 46 Americans in their home and at a music festival. Despicable acts of sexual violence. Two-hundred and fifty innocents taken hostage.”

“I’ve met with the families of those hostages. I’ve grieved with them. They’re going through hell,” he continued. “Innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell. Thousands and thousands killed, including aid workers. Too many families dislocated, crowding in the tents, facing a dire humanitarian situation. They did not ask for this war that Hamas started.”

Biden called on Israel and Hamas to accept the ceasefire-for-hostages that he first outlined in May and that has stalled ever since. He said that the deal would ease suffering in the Gaza Strip and result in greater security for Israel, a Gaza “free from Hamas’s grip” and bring an end to the war.

The terms of the deal that the administration has previously outlined do not include removing Hamas from power.

Biden added that a diplomatic solution was “the only path” to resolve the Israel-Lebanon border crisis, and he also pressed for the creation of a Palestinian state.

“We must also address the rise of violence against innocent Palestinians on the West Bank and set the conditions for a better future, including a two-state solution,” the president said. “Where Israel enjoys security and peace and full recognition and normalized relations with all its neighbors. Where Palestinians live in security, dignity and self-determination in a state of their own.”

He claimed that progress towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians would make it easier to confront the threat posed by Iran and said that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon.
King of Jordan Rejects Harboring Palestinian Refugees in U.N. Speech: ‘That Will Never Happen’
King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned the international community for allegedly failing their “moral duty” to protect Palestinian civilians during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, but took a moment to categorically reject the possibility of Jordan taking in Palestinians fleeing war.

The king dedicated the entirety of his speech to condemning Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terror organization Hamas. Israel launched a sweeping anti-terrorist initiative in Hamas-controlled Gaza following the invasion of the country by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. On that occasion, Hamas jihadists stormed residential neighborhoods in Israel, killing entire families in their homes, engaging in gang-rape and torture, and taking hostages. The Israeli government believed 101 people remain in Hamas captivity at press time, while approximately 1,200 were killed on the day of the attack.

King Abdullah did not mention Hamas by name during his speech, though he mentioned “October 7” on several occasions – not as the date of an unprecedented slaughter by jihadists, but as the start of what he claimed was a massacre of Palestinians. Absent recognition of the October 7 attack, the king made the Israeli military operation appear to not be prompted by anything.

“This Israeli government has killed more children, more journalists, more aid workers, and more medical personnel than any other war in recent memory,” the king claimed. “Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 – so is it any wonder that many are questioning how can this war not be perceived as deliberately targeting the Palestinians?”

“The level of civilian suffering cannot be written off as unavoidable collateral,” he added.

The alleged death toll of 42,000 people appears to be a reference to numbers published by the “Gaza Health Ministry,” a Hamas entity.

King Abdullah continued to declare that world nations must act to protect Palestinians – except Jordan, which would not accept Palestinian refugees in the name of rejecting “forced displacement.”
Hamas Superfan Erdogan Compares Netanyahu to Hitler at U.N.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent over half of his very lengthy address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday criticizing Israel for its war against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Erdogan accused the Israelis of genocide, compared them to Nazi Germany, and demanded the U.N. authorize “coercive measures against Israel” to halt the war in Gaza.

“The international community, and all of us in the human family, must fulfill our obligation to the Palestinian people without further delay,” Erdogan demanded.

Turkey’s Islamist leader claimed the U.N. has “failed in its founding mission” and become a “dysfunctional structure” because it has done nothing to stop “the massacre that has been going on in Gaza for the last 350 days.”

“They shredded the charter of the United Nations from the rostrum of the United Nations and shamelessly challenged the whole world,” he said of the Israelis.

“In Gaza, not only children are dying, but also the United Nations system. The values that the West claims to defend are dying. Truth is dying. The hopes of humanity to live in a more just world are dying, one by one,” he declared.

Erdogan blamed the U.N.’s inaction on Israel and its most influential supporters, although he never quite got around to calling out the United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, by name.

“‘The world is bigger than five’ is my motto. International justice cannot be left to the will of five privileged member states of the Security Council,” he said.

Erdogan extensively regurgitated Hamas propaganda about the war in Gaza, absurdly insisting that almost all of the casualties were “women and children” deliberately targeted by Israel in a campaign of genocide.

“I call out to the United Nations Security Council: what are you waiting for to prevent the genocide in Gaza, to put a stop to this cruelty, this barbarism? What are you waiting for to stop Netanyahu and his mass murder network?” he asked.

Erdogan tried intimidating the “countries supporting Israel in an unconditional manner” by asking how long they could “carry the same of witnessing this massacre.” Later, he suggested all of the countries supporting Israel should be held accountable as accomplices to its alleged crimes.

Erdogan accused the Israelis of “disregarding basic human rights,” “trampling on international law,” and “practicing ethnic cleansing–- a clear genocide against a nation, a people, and occupying their lands step-by-step.”

“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity,” he declared, asking the UNGA to authorize the use of force against Israel.
Colombian President Urges 'World Revolution' Against U.S., Israel at U.N.
Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro declared that neither Israel nor the United States are “the children of God” and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “criminal” in an unhinged speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

Petro, who called for a “world revolution” and for an artificial intelligence “global public authority,” accused the “richest one-percent of humanity, the powerful global oligarchy” of allowing bombs to fall in “Gaza and Sudan,” and denounced free market ideas for allegedly bringing about “the maximization of death.”

The bombs, according to Petro, are allegedly being brandished by “racists, supremacists, those who stupidly believe that the Aryans are the superior race.”

“The control of humanity on the basis of barbarism is under construction and its demonstration is Gaza. When Gaza dies, humanity will die,” Petro said. “It turns out that God’s people were not Israel, nor the United States, but the whole of humanity and the children of Gaza were just that, humanity, God’s chosen people.”

“[Benjamin] Netanyahu is a hero for the richest one percent of humanity because he is able to show that peoples are destroyed under bombs,” he continued.

Petro, an ardent communist and member in his youth of the M19 Colombian Marxist guerrilla terrorist organization, cut diplomatic ties with Israel in May in response to Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorists of Hamas. The rupture followed Petro publicly comparing Israel to Nazi Germany for entering Hamas-controlled Gaza to prevent the terrorists from repeating the atrocities of the October 7 attack against the country.

The far-left president ranted that “no one listens” to governments such as his that demand an end to the “genocide” in Gaza, the “decarbonization” of the world, and his proposal of debt forgiveness in exchange for climate action. Petro claimed that governments with “the power to destroy life” are the ones that are heard instead.


A Survivor’s Last Day
Moshe Ridler survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel, where he built a career and raised a family. On Oct. 7, at age 92, he was murdered by terrorists at Kibbutz Holit.

On Simchat Torah, October 1941, Moshe Ridler was deported from his home in Herta, on the border between Romania and Ukraine.

The youngest child of Pearl and Zelig Ridler, Moshe was a third-grade student, age ten.

The family’s persecution began a year earlier, when the Soviets invaded the city. At first, it was only the bourgeois Jews who were deprived of their property and deported. But when Romanian troops took over, the repercussions for all Jews were immediate. On July 5, 1941, a new mayor and a civil guard were established with a clear mission: to get rid of the Jews of Herta.

Nearly the entire Jewish population was herded into a square in the city center. Men, women, children, and the elderly were separated from one another, stripped naked, beaten, and tortured. Dozens were forced to dig their own mass grave before being shot.

Three weeks into the Romanian occupation, most of the sixteen hundred surviving Jews of the town were deported to the Edintz transit camp. The very last group, including the Ridler family of five, was sent on a three-hundred-kilometer death march to transit ghettos and camps in Transnistria.

Pearl Ridler, the forty-six-year-old mother of three, succumbed to typhus during this death march. The rest of the family made it to the Romanchi ghetto, but fifteen-year-old Mina Ridler died of exhaustion shortly thereafter. From Romanchi, Moshe’s father, Zelig, was sent to a labor camp in Odessa, while his eldest sister, Feige, was sent to another labor camp in Tulchin. Moshe Ridler, not yet eleven years old, found himself alone in the ghetto.

The name Ridler was the bane of Tel Aviv criminals in the 1960s.

Thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators—one by one, Master Sergeant Moshe Ridler from the city police central investigation unit led the denizens of Tel Aviv’s underworld into the district courthouse.

Two men attempting to molest schoolgirls by seducing them with marijuana—Ridler found the substance hidden in a flower vase during a surprise search and arrested them; four masked men broke into a diamond polisher’s premises, stealing $50,000 worth of diamonds at gunpoint from an elderly couple—Ridler acted on a tip from an informant and didn’t just find the loot, he found other stolen diamonds worth well over $100,000; in 1965, the same year he busted a hotel owner for tobacco smuggling, he won a citation as the Best Police Driver—which came with a certificate personally signed by the police commissioner.

Master Sergeant Moshe Ridler was a slim young man with a thick mane of dark hair and a noticeable Romanian accent. He lived among the criminals he pursued, in a modest apartment in a police-only building with his wife, Pia—a fellow Romanian immigrant who fled to Israel after the war—their son, and two daughters.

He named his first daughter Pnina, the Hebrew translation of Pearl, his mother’s name.

Neither the criminals nor the policemen of Tel Aviv, not even his own children, knew the origins of Master Sergeant Moshe Ridler.

After a few months alone in the Romanchi ghetto, eleven-year-old Ridler threatened a group of older boys he overheard planning an escape: If they didn’t include him in their escape plans, he’d report them to the camp commander.

In the ghetto’s informal justice code, being a “moser”—a Jew who informs the authorities about a fellow Jew’s suspected crimes—was a transgression punishable by death. That the boy would risk this punishment was proof that he was serious, so after initially rebuffing him, they eventually included him. A few days later, under the cover of darkness, the group made a small hole in the ghetto fence and started running, without any intended destination.

The next day, Ridler awoke atop a stove in an unfamiliar house. He’d been discovered, nearly frozen, by a couple in a Ukrainian village about thirty kilometers from the ghetto.

The family welcomed him as a member of their household. He worked alongside the family’s children, tending to the land and milking cows. He was there for a year and a half, until he heard that Jews were returning to Herta.

Out of the 1,940 Jews who lived in Herta before the war, only 450 were still alive.

Moshe visited the synagogue he’d gone to with his family, sitting on the stairs, waiting and hoping. One of those times, his father, Zelig, was there. They managed to reunite with his sister, Feige, as well. They were now a family of three.

Excerpted from “10/7: 100 Human Stories” by Lee Yaron.
As High Holidays approach, hostages will be ‘absent presence’ at US shuls
For the past year, Rona Passman has thought continuously about someone she cannot see—her uncle Amiram Cooper, whom Hamas terrorists kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz along the border with the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.

“If I ate, I would remember that he was being starved. If I took a shower or brushed my teeth, I knew he was sitting in utter filth lacking any basic hygiene,” the Los Angeles real estate agent told JNS.

“Even just cleaning my glasses, I would remember that Hamas broke his glasses, and he couldn’t see anything the entire time,” Passman added.

Sinai Temple, the Conservative synagogue that Passman attends in Los Angeles, dedicated 240 of the 1,000 seats in its sanctuary to the hostages the week after Oct. 7. That included one for Cooper, 85, an economist, poet and composer, who was a founding member of Nir Oz. (The Israeli military informed Cooper’s family in June that he was murdered and that Hamas is holding his body.)

Passman told JNS that she is grateful that her synagogue made the effort to share her experience.

“I think it is important to talk about Amiram—to show that he is a real person with a family that loves him,” she said. “He is not just another poster.”

Jews have long created symbolic physical presences for those who are unseen, from the Elijah cup during the Passover seder and the Elijah chair at circumcisions to the ushpizin prayer, in which forefathers and foremothers are invited into the sukkah during the holiday. Some Jews leave portions of the ceiling unpainted to remember the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem—the same idea many memorialize when they break glass during Jewish weddings.

“It is an essential part of the Jewish tradition to dwell among ghosts,” David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and scholar-in-residence at the Maimonides Fund, told JNS.

“Our community is much larger than the people in front of us, and so our tradition is trying to make us aware of that, both horizontally around the world and vertically through time,” said Wolpe, who stepped down from Harvard University’s Jew-hatred task force last year. “It’s particularly intense when a member of the community is in trouble.”

Setting empty chairs for the hostages on Shabbat or at the seder table hearkens back not only to Jewish religious traditions but also to efforts to draw attention to the plight of Soviet Jewish prisoners in the 1970s and 1980s, according to Wolpe.

As the High Holidays approach, Hamas continues to hold 101 hostages, including 97 of the 251 captured on Oct. 7. It is not known publicly how many hostages are living, making it more difficult than ever to conjure their presence.
New York exhibition explores artistic responses to trauma of Oct. 7
After seeing artistic responses in Israel to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Danielle R’bibo, a graduate student at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, decided that there should be a gallery exhibit in New York City exploring the trauma of the terror attack in southern Israel.

The freelance art curator in New York contacted Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz, who created the “kidnapped” poster campaign, messaged other artists on social media and the exhibit—her first curated gallery show—came together.

“I just felt like there was something there and something to be shown,” R’bibo, who per her LinkedIn profile worked in marketing and consulting before pursuing an art career, told JNS. “Obviously, the war in Israel is getting so political, but there’s a whole side of it—of the people there that are recovering and reflecting on what happened.”

R’bibo’s show, on view until Sept. 26 at David Benrimon Fine Art just southeast of Central Park in midtown Manhattan, is titled “Resilience and Reflection: An Artistic Response to Oct. 7.”

“Art allows us to communicate the inexpressible, to process pain, and to find hope amid sorrow,” R’bibo stated in a release. “The artists in this exhibition are deeply moved by the opportunity to share their work in America. Through their art, they aim to honor the memories of those lost, bringing a human face to the war.”

The curator told JNS that the exhibit—which includes paintings, poems, sculptures, videos and mixed-media works—is apolitical and focuses on reflection and survival.

The Tel Aviv sculptor Yarin Didi is one of the artists represented in the show. His work “Cut Apart” combines a human figure and a building, both of which are fragmented and abstracted.

“Days unending, where the code red alarm echoes ceaselessly. Days where safety is a distant memory, and the future, even the present, feels shrouded in uncertainty,” a description of the work states. “Scars, both seen and unseen, destined to remain, perhaps never to heal. The relentless conflict carves into us, leaving humanity cut and scarred.”

“The small house with the red roof stands as a testament to the horrors around Gaza on that fateful Oct. 7,” per the description. “The earth beneath the figure, crafted from olive wood, symbolizes peace with its olive branch. The entire composition—from the figure to the ground and the house—captures emotions too heavy for most to bear or speak of.”
The Living Victims of October 7: The Mental Health Struggles of Massacre Survivors
When Liat thought of how to help struggling kibbutzim communities most efficiently, she knew this was where she could have the most impact. “It’s not an obvious decision,” Liat admitted, “We must go with the method which we know has already proven itself.”

Just over a month into the war, Liat called Yifat, who had received several phone calls from survivors seeking psychological support. One of those calls had been from Nira, who wished to avoid speaking to a social worker at the hotel she was to stay at. Nira had a longstanding relationship with Yifat. She knew she could count on her to give her the necessary push to ask for help.

So, when Liat pitched the idea, Yifat was ready. “Let’s make it happen. Let’s save these communities.” That conversation would lead them to start Journey4Hope, a nonprofit organization designed to provide psychological support to Israel’s most recent survivors.

There are various mental health initiatives for October 7th survivors, from hospitals offering MDMA treatments to doctors traveling to Israel to perform electro-neurostimulation therapy. There has also been a wave of mental health professionals volunteering their time, and government programs. Nonetheless, Yifat worries that even if mental health professionals like herself work around the clock, there won’t be enough of them to help all those in need.

“We must use other innovation tools in order to do that. This tool is already proven on soldiers. Let’s fine-tune it and bring it to the communities.”

To understand the impact of these journeys, Yifat explains elements of trauma and how — based on her studies and those of others, like Gabor Maté — to arrive at proven antidotes. Trauma disrupts our daily routine; therefore, the days are structured and scheduled for you from the minute you wake up to the moment you rest your head, reminding you of consistency. To fight the feeling of helplessness trauma creates, we must also be reminded of our own competence, just like when Yifat realized she could overcome her fear of heights. The third element of trauma is feeling frozen in time or frozen in our emotions. To connect back to motion, it is essential that the participants reconnect with their bodies, whether it’s hiking in the desert or dancing together with the group, which brings us to the fourth element. These journeys are never taken alone. To combat the isolation of trauma, these journeys are taken in groups, which ultimately leads to lifelong friendships. Friendships that Nira and others have relied on in the aftermath of Israel’s darkest hour.

For all three women, community is the heart of their mission. Because of Nira’s connection to the journey model and Yifat and Liat, Kfar Azza will be the first community Journey4Hope supports through its work once it gathers sufficient funds, though they’ve already been able to assist b’nei mitzvot aged children of the kibbutzim communities of the Gaza envelope, who have not been able to mark their rite of passage.

The journey will tentatively help 25 to 30 women of Kfar Azza, including Nira. “The resilience of a community depends on the resilience of its women,” Yifat, with her years of expertise, proudly affirms. Though there is a sufficient amount of science to support this claim, one can’t help but think of Tzipporah and Miriam leading the Jewish people out of danger and into a space where they could begin to rebuild.

It will take years for the communities most impacted on October 7th to recover. The war after the war will be longer, and without psychological support. Nira fears her community will be running on empty. Activism has kept her, Liat, and Yifat going.

For Nira, it’s also a dream of perseverance and the hope that she can one day call her house her home again.

“We have to keep the light on in every place that evil forces want to destroy. I want to turn on the light in my home so that people in Gaza will see that I am here to stay.”


Israeli Nonprofit Started by Friends of Nova Massacre Victim Opens Healing Center in Thailand for Oct. 7 Survivors
An Israeli nonprofit organization, founded by friends of a victim of the Nova Music Festival massacre on Oct. 7, recently opened a trauma center in Thailand for survivors of the Hamas terrorist attacks who are seeking an escape from Israel.

Let’s Do Something was created in memory of David Newman, who was killed at the Nova Music Festival in Re’im, Israel, where Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered nearly 400 people and kidnapped approximately 40 others.

Immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks, a group of Newman’s closest friends in their 20s formed a WhatsApp group called “Let’s Do Something” with the goal of helping to gather supplies, equipment, and humanitarian aid for those affected by Hamas terrorism. Since then, the nonprofit has provided 300,000 pounds of humanitarian aid and equipment to over 20,000 soldiers and 50,000 displaced civilians, including bulletproof vests, army boots, kneepads, and drones for soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Its newest initiative focuses on helping Oct. 7 survivors and soldiers in the area of mental health, including many suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Let’s Do Something opened a healing center, called David’s Circle, in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, a country that is a popular destination spot for Israeli tourists. David’s Circle hosted its first gathering of people on Sept. 18 and will host another event on Oct. 7. The goal is to serve roughly 150 people a month at the new healing center, David Gani, the chief financial officer and co-founder of Let’s Do Something, told The Algemeiner.

Statistics show that more than 100,000 Israelis left Israel and traveled to Thailand since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. New data released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics on Sunday also revealed that because of the Israel-Hamas war, there was a 59 percent increase in Israelis who moved out of Israel, with no plans of returning, during the first seven months of 2024 compared to last year. Each month this year, roughly 2,200 more Israelis left Israel than in 2023.

David’s Circle aims to support the thousands of Israelis who have relocated to Thailand or traveled to the country for solace over the past year, wanting to escape the war, trauma, and terror attacks they experienced in Israel.


Seth Mandel: The Disgraceful and Disgraced Robert Malley
Malley was part of the Obama administration’s negotiating team that fooled itself into the lopsided Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump then pulled the U.S. out of. In 2021, Malley was invited back by the Biden administration to try to get a new deal. He showed up so ready to give away the store that he embarrassed other U.S. negotiators and the Europeans.

“Malley proposed removing the portion of the U.S. sanctions that related to Iran’s nuclear program, attempting to mirror the conditions of the original nuclear agreement,” reports the Wall Street Journal in an overview of Malley’s failures. “Malley’s direct approach worried some members of his 10-person negotiating team, who believed he was showing his hand too soon.”

A member of Spain’s negotiating team was surprised by how much Malley “unveiled” immediately. Others thought it was clear that Iran was merely playing for time and using Malley as a dupe. That soon proved to be the case. “Iran pocketed U.S. proposals and demanded more deal points, including the removal of Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, from the U.S. foreign terrorist organization list,” the Journal notes.

Eventually, Malley’s desperation caused others on the U.S. team to throw up their hands in frustration: “Malley’s deputy, Richard Nephew, resigned, citing on X ‘a sincere difference of opinion concerning policy.’ Another member of the group, Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian-American State Department employee, also left.”

A brief word on Tabatabai is necessary to understand just how badly Malley had bungled the talks. Last year, Semafor began reporting on an Iranian government influence operation known as the Iran Experts Initiative. The Iranian Foreign Ministry recruited and oversaw a group of influential professionals who often coordinated with Tehran about writing op-eds and even just getting advice about navigating the issue in the halls of power. Tabatabai was one of the IEI figures. She was, according to one email from an Iranian diplomatic figure, a member of “the core group of the IEI.”

And yet, Malley’s graceless thirst to appease Iran might have been too much for Tabatabai.

The Journal reports that an investigation that began in 2023 after Malley clicked on a phishing link turned up more than expected—that Malley may have moved classified material to private accounts. Last April, his clearance was suspended. When Congress inquired about his absence, the State Department came up with a cover story about Malley taking personal time.

The State Department also tried to brush off the FBI. An inspector general’s report last week revealed that the administration didn’t follow normal protocol in the way it informed Malley that his clearance was suspended because they wanted to save him the embarrassment—though surely they were more interested in saving the State Department itself from embarrassment. As a result, “Diplomatic Security officials notified Malley of his clearance suspension one day later than originally intended. That meant Malley may have been able to participate in a classified conference call with White House officials — after the suspension was approved but before he was told about it.”

Malley’s job performance may have put U.S. national interests at risk, but he was hired with eyes wide open. Before joining the Obama administration, Malley worked for the International Crisis Group where he ingratiated himself with figures inside Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are designated terrorist entities with much American blood on their hands. The Obama administration considered those contacts a plus, since both groups are proxies for the Iranian government, but it’s clear that Malley picked up a particularly skewed understanding of the region from rogue state proxies, leading to America’s very public diplomatic humiliation.

Oh, and the higher education angle to all this, by the way? While on leave for allegedly mishandling classified information in his role as envoy to the Iranians, Malley has been given a soft landing with plum teaching posts at Princeton and Yale. His main subject, in the words of the Journal: “U.S. foreign policy and human rights.”
'It Sure Looks Like This Administration Is Colluding With Iran': Lawmaker Calls for Probe Into State Department Following Robert Malley Revelations
The Biden-Harris administration intentionally sought to "cover up" the suspension of embattled Iran envoy Robert Malley, according to Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), who is calling for further scrutiny into the State Department after an explosive inspector general report found that the agency grossly mishandled the affair.

In a Monday letter, Banks, a House Armed Services Committee member, instructed the State Department to explain how Malley was permitted to continue accessing classified information after his security clearance was pulled in 2023. Malley was placed on indefinite leave from his post when it became clear the FBI was investigating him for keeping classified information in his personal email account. Banks said the move allowed that information to be "compromised by a foreign actor."

"Many of Malley’s colleagues were not aware of the suspension and may have continued to share classified information with him," Banks wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "Malley’s deputy was instructed not to tell anyone about the suspension but was given no guidance on when to include or exclude Malley from sensitive matters."

Banks's letter follows a bombshell inspector general report released last week that details how the State Department breached multiple federal protocols after it suspended Malley, including by keeping the revocation of his security clearance a secret from senior staff and Malley himself. This allowed Malley to participate in a "secure telephone call" with the White House after his clearance was yanked. Malley continued to handle sensitive information well after he should have been cut off, the report found.

"Instead of immediately putting Malley on leave or relieving him of his position, the State Department tried to keep Malley’s suspension quiet and allow him to continue his work as if nothing had changed, likely in violation of the law," Banks wrote. "This decision to spare Malley of ‘potential embarrassment’ reportedly came from top department officials at State."

Additionally, "the allegations of Malley’s mishandling of classified information were not reported to the State IG’s office, violating the Department of State Authorities Act."
FAA administrator Michael Whitaker testifies that agency hasn’t advised airlines to stop flying to Israel
Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker testified on Tuesday that the FAA has not advised U.S. airlines to stop flying to Israel amid the ongoing suspension of flights.

Whitaker made the admission after being asked by Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) about FAA involvement in the blanket flight suspensions while testifying before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation.

“That would be an airline decision. The role of FAA really is around NOTAMs and safety of flight, that type of issue. So we do communicate with, particularly in this instance which is constantly changing in real time, and we provide guidance on NOTAMs and safety,” Whitaker said.

“I think at this point we’re mirroring the NOTAMs that are put in place by Israel for where you can fly and don’t fly. So we don’t provide anything beyond that, but we do have, for the carriers that fly to that region, usually they have a classified status so we can give them intel briefings when they make their decisions,” he added.


Gov Whitmer scolds 'Squad' member for 'antisemitic' attack against Michigan's Jewish AG
After facing backlash for refusing to defend her state's attorney general against a suggestion of religious bias, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a statement Monday condemning Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., for the "antisemitic" allegation.

"The suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is antisemitic," Whitmer wrote in a statement shared by CNN host Jake Tapper. "Attorney General Nessel has always conducted her work with integrity and followed the rule of law. We must all use our platform and voices to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes."

Whitmer's statement comes one day after she refused to take a side in the feud between the state's Attorney General Dana Nessel and Tlaib, who accused Nessel of bringing charges against anti-Israel campus protesters at the University of Michigan because she is Jewish.

Nessel, Michigan's first Jewish attorney general, charged nine university students for refusing to leave the anti-Israel encampments in May after police ordered them to vacate, the Detroit Metro Times reported. They are being charged with trespassing and resisting or obstructing a police officer, according to the outlet. Two additional people were charged with attempted ethnic intimidation and malicious destruction of personal property at a separate anti-Israel protest.

Tlaib, a ‘Squad’ member and vocal critic of Israel, suggested that the charges from Nessel were "shameful" and religiously motivated, telling the Detroit Metro Times in an interview, "it seems that the Attorney General decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."

Nessel responded on X, "Rashida Tlaib should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It’s anti-Semitic and wrong.'"

In an interview on CNN’s "State of the Union" Sunday, Tapper asked Whitmer whether she agrees with Nessel, a Democrat, that Tlaib's accusation about her charging anti-Israel campus demonstrators because of her personal religious bias was rooted in antisemitism.

"Do you think Attorney General Nessel is not doing her job? Because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law, and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish, and the protesters are not," Tapper asked. "That’s quite an accusation. Do you think it’s true?"

"I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having," Whitmer replied. "I can just say this: We do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses, and we recognize that every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out. And I’m going to use every lever of mine to ensure that both are true."


Mayor of Muslim-Majority US City Officially Endorses Trump for President
The mayor of the only Muslim-majority city in the United States endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over the weekend, potentially boosting the former US president’s chances of winning the critical swing state of Michigan this November.

Amer Ghalib, mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, released a statement on Facebook on Sunday, praising Trump’s character and urging his residents to vote for the former president on Election Day. Ghalib also posted a photo of himself standing alongside Trump, claiming that the pair met in person just days before.

“I believe he is the right choice for this critical time,” Ghalib said of Trump, praising him as a “man of principles.”

“I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences,” Ghalib added.

The mayor told The Detroit News that Trump was already familiar with him prior to the sit-down.

“He knew a lot about me before the meeting,” Ghalib told the outlet.

“We talked about various topics including the debates, the polls updates, the statistics of votes in Michigan and Wayne County, the Arab American concerns and the Yemeni Americans in particular. We also talked about the situation in Yemen,” the mayor continued.

The mayor added that during their private 20-minute meeting, Trump asked for an endorsement from him as he seeks to win the presidency and defeat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“He asked me if I can endorse him and ask people to vote for him? I told him: ‘I’m here to talk about that and how we can make it happen,'” the mayor said. “I then handed him an official letter with some details about our concerns and to invite him to come to Hamtramck if possible.”


How Harvard Divinity Teaches Hate
At the age of 63, when I enrolled as a master’s degree student at Harvard Divinity School in the fall of 2022, I anticipated two years to contemplate the great works of the past and engage in stimulating discussions with brilliant teachers and students. That, I accomplished. What I didn’t expect was that the school would also provide a chilling education in the contemporary antisemitism that’s on its way to overtaking higher education.

I was raised a Reform Jew in Atlanta in a family of stalwart Zionists—both parents were avid moral and financial supporters of Israel. My religious observance waned for many years, but over the past decade has been reenergized.

Before I retired and decided to embark on theological studies, I was the chief investment officer of a $25 billion mutual fund. I was attracted to Harvard Divinity because of its avowed religious pluralism. The school was established in 1816 as the country’s first nonsectarian theological school, and today, while it still prepares some students for the clergy, it also attracts leaders from many fields in order to enrich their understanding of religion.

I don’t think of myself as a naive person. But as my time at Harvard Divinity School unfolded, I was shocked to discover there was a hidden mission in some corners of the school: a fervent opposition to the existence of Israel to the point of encouraging its elimination.
Federal investigators of campus antisemitism understaffed, overloaded and backlogged
A group of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives heard about challenges faced by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, both in reviewing complaints of discrimination and enforcing serious consequences to quell them.

Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary of education for civil rights, spoke with the legislators in a roundtable discussion on Sept. 20, when she explained that her team of approximately 400 investigators had not increased since the Bush administration, resulting in staff carrying too many cases and taking too long to resolve them.

Lhamon said she could not “manage that complaint volume with the staff that I have” and that each person carried about 51 cases. “You cannot do civil-rights work effectively with a caseload that is that high,” she told the lawmakers.

Attending were Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Kathy Manning (D-N.C.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) and Kim Schrier (D-Wash.).

Lhamon described the multiyear process of revoking a university’s federal funding, which includes an investigation and a chance to comply with the department’s findings. Should a judgment come, legal appeals that could reach as high as the Supreme Court might take years.

She also noted that the department lacked the ability to force a school to fire faculty members for violations.
CUNY Jewish students share experiences of antisemitism at roundtable with Torres, Adams
Jewish student leaders from the City University of New York shared firsthand accounts of campus antisemitism with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Eric Adams at a roundtable inside City Hall on Monday.

The meeting came as a result of several antisemitic incidents CUNY students have faced just weeks into the new academic year. Many of the students in attendance said that antisemitism is more intense on campus than it was last year. They shared that they were met with loud protests outside of a recent event intending to welcome new Jewish students to campus.

On Sep. 3, some CUNY Jewish students were followed to a kosher restaurant in midtown Manhattan, where pro-Palestinian student demonstrators blockaded the entrance and shouted threats at Jewish customers.

Also this month, CUNY’s Baruch College tried to cancel an annual campus Rosh Hashanah celebration over safety concerns. Baruch’s president, Szu-yung David Wu, initially told students that he could not “guarantee their security.” The decision was later reversed on the condition that Hillel’s name would not be on the Sept. 26 event due to fears of anti-Israel protests.

“We’ve been fighting for almost a year now with all of the antisemitism going on both on campus and in the city,” Maya Gavriel, a third-year student studying accounting at Baruch, told Jewish Insider at the event. “Being able to speak with leaders who can actually make change, and they’re listening to what’s happening, feels like I’m finally getting an opportunity to be proud about being Jewish. I’m under the impression that [Adams and Torres] care about wanting to give us the resources to make a change, but it will only come with time and a lot of pressure.”

Gavriel noted that she’s particularly appreciative of Torres for meeting with Baruch Jewish students immediately after the Rosh Hashanah event cancellation. “He set up the meeting with Mayor Adams and the NYPD,” she said. “He listened and gave us resources and that’s how I know things are happening. That’s why we keep showing up to tell our stories and we’re not stopping this fight.”

Students expressed that the NYPD did not move fast enough last year to break up demonstrations.
HBS Faculty Add Mezuzahs to Office Doors in Support of Jewish College Freshman
More than a dozen Jewish Harvard Business School faculty added mezuzahs provided by Harvard Hillel to their office doorposts in support of Sarah F. Silverman ’28, a Jewish freshman at the College whose mezuzah briefly disappeared earlier this month.

HBS professor Jeffery J. Bussgang ’91, who is leading the initiative, said he wanted to use the mezuzahs — scrolls of parchment containing Torah verses and traditionally placed outside Jewish homes — to make a statement about Jewish belonging on campus.

“When I read the news about what happened to Sarah Silverman, I wanted to take action. I felt it was important for Jewish students, faculty, and staff on campus to feel a strong sense of belonging and inclusion,” Bussgang wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.

Silverman expressed her appreciation for the initiative and praised the “strong Jewish and Jewish-allied network” that offers support in times of difficulty.

“Although I had a rather traumatic start to my experience at Harvard, I am happy that good has come out of it with initiatives starting to increase Jewish pride by putting up mezuzahs,” Silverman wrote in a text message.

HBS professor Richard S. Ruback, another faculty member participating in the initiative, said the mezuzahs would bring visibility toward Jewish affiliates.

“I just thought it was worthwhile for other faculty and students to just know that there are Jews on campus,” Ruback said. “Generally, Jews are different from other minorities — you can’t really tell by looking at somebody, or seeing their last name whether they’re Jewish or not.”

“I just wanted to be clear that I am,” he added.
University Cancels Panel Because Author Is a ‘Zionist’
The cancellation of Albert’s panel highlights a worrying recent trend in the realm of literature, where authors who believe that the world’s only Jewish state should not be singled out for elimination are finding themselves increasingly facing calls for their work to be boycotted and their voices silenced. What’s more, this tendency to cast anyone who is “Zionist”—a.k.a. Jewish—as an oppressor, and thus canceled for the common good, is escalating in elite, educated circles, sources told The Free Press.

Zibby Owens, founder of her own publishing house Zibby Books and the editor of a forthcoming volume of essays by Jewish writers reflecting on antisemitism after October 7, told The Free Press, “A lot of Jewish authors are feeling that many publishers don’t want to go there. This is not for books just about Israel, this is about fiction books involving Jewish life.”

Owens said the pressure on Jewish authors has taken a few different forms. Sometimes there are “review bombs,” she said, where a book is torpedoed on the reader website Goodreads even before its publishing date. There has also been an epidemic of progressive-leaning bookstores that have canceled events with Jewish authors, she said. (Joshua Leifer, the progressive Jewish author of new book Tablets Shattered, saw his book launch abruptly called off in Brooklyn in August, once again for that woolly reason: “unforeseen circumstances.”)

“There are bookstores that won’t carry books by Jewish authors with Free Palestine stickers on the doors,” Owens said. “You go in and there are no Jewish books inside.”

Ken Marcus, the founder of the Brandeis Center, a legal think tank that has sued and won antisemitism cases against universities for the last 12 years, agreed with Owens’ take. “There’s more and more pressure to deplatform Jewish writers who are viewed as being pro-Israel or Zionist,” said Marcus, adding that the progressive attitudes of higher education are infecting the publishing landscape. “Whether their books aren’t promoted at a bookstore, or whether social media is used to try to blacklist them. All of this is happening at an accelerated pace. And it’s getting worse.”

For literary agent Deborah Harris, who runs a Jerusalem-based agency that represents most of the big publishers in the Israeli market, part of her job is selling the Hebrew-language rights to American books. In recent years, she told me, a “shocking” number of American writers “don’t want to be published in the Hebrew language.”

She added: “I have authors who have been asked to make public statements in favor of the Palestinian state.”

The writer James Kirchick sounded the alarm bells on this trend back in May with an opinion column for The New York Times entitled “A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing.” Kirchick wrote: “Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel.”


Magic Trick: The New York Times Covers Up UNRWA Participation in Hamas’ October 7 Massacre
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.

If a magician never reveals their tricks, then we shouldn’t expect The New York Times to acknowledge the brazen sleight of hand it used to cover up for terrorists involved in the Oct. 7 massacre.

The secret behind the newspaper’s illusion, however, should be revealed.

After all, the Times promises something far greater than petty amusement. It promises journalism that’s “beyond reproach” and of the “highest possible standards,” as the paper’s guidelines put it, all of which makes The New York Times, in the words of its executive editor, “a pillar of democracy.”

From the perspective of the audience, the trick looked something like this: Readers see that Israel charged several UN employees with participating the Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. They are told that Israel hasn’t shared evidence for such charges. And with the wave of the wand, the UN is vindicated, and Israel is incriminated.

In the paper’s own words:
Israel and UNRWA have long had contentious relations, and they have sharply deteriorated since the war began. Earlier this year, Israel accused a dozen workers of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack in Israel or its aftermath, an allegation that imperiled the organization because it led donors, including the United States, to suspend their financial support.

The United Nations fired 10 of the 12 employees Israel accused. An internal UN investigation later found that Israel had not provided evidence to back up its separate allegation that many UNRWA workers had ties to Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

There could hardly be a more egregious and indefensible example of misdirection.

The UN investigation mentioned by the paper did not look into Israel’s complaint about UNRWA staff involvement in the Oct. 7 massacre. But a separate UN investigation did.

And that investigation largely vindicated Israel.


FBI reports record-high antisemitic hate crimes in 2023, up 63% from 2022
The FBI reported on Monday that antisemitic hate crimes hit record-high levels in the United States in 2023, increasing 63% from 2022, a rise that one Jewish leader called “staggering.”

In 2023, 1,832 anti-Jewish hate crimes were reported to the FBI’s data collection program, making up the majority of reported religious-based hate crimes (68%) and far outpacing any other type of religious-based hate crime. Those incidents encompassed 2,002 specific offenses against 2,069 victims (including both individuals and institutions).

Antisemitic hate crimes also made up 16% of all reported single-bias hate incidents reported in 2023, and were the second-largest category of hate crimes reported in 2023, behind anti-Black hate crimes (3,027 incidents) and ahead of anti-gay male crimes (1,037 incidents).

Of the reported 2,069 victims of anti-Jewish hate crimes, 1,060 suffered destruction of property or vandalism, 700 intimidation and 112 simple assault. Smaller numbers of victims faced larceny (84), aggravated assault (62), crimes against society (14), robbery (13), burglary (11) and arson (8).

One hundred twenty-eight of the reported victims were minors.

The FBI also reported 415 multiple-bias incidents. Anti-Muslim hate crimes (236) and anti-Arab hate crimes (123) were also up compared to 2022 levels — 158 anti-Muslim incidents and 92 anti-Arab incidents — but made up a much smaller proportion of the overall dataset.


Jewish comic’s pro-jihadi gay persona scorches social media
Shortly after Hamas invaded Israel, Lyle Culpepper knew that his comfortable life as a gender studies professor at a prestigious American university was about to change.

A self-professed ex-lover of several Hamas leaders, Culpepper suspended his academic career to advocate for Palestinians so passionately and effectively that his popular social media videos are followed and liked even by prominent Zionists, including jurist Anne Herzberg; ADL executive Andrew Srulevitch and senior Israeli diplomats David Saranga and Naor Gilon.

At least, that’s what Culpepper would probably say.

In reality, though, Culpepper is a satirical character created by Florida-based Jewish actor L.E. Staiman, whose popularity has soared after Oct. 7 thanks to his caricaturing of the clueless campus cronies of Iran’s global jihad.

In one of Lyle’s most popular videos, with nearly 800,000 views and 10,000 likes on X, he mourns the loss of the Iranian drones that Israel shot down over its territory in April.

“Forty percent of those drones were children,” Lyle says in that video, his voice cracking with emotion as his bleached, disheveled hair—a wig—quivers over a khaki keffiyeh of the kind favored by Hezbollah terrorists.

“These are drones that will never experience filming a landscape, of a big shot of a city, or a Jake Gyllenhaal ambulance chase scene,” he continues. He asks viewers to “pray for the drones of Iran” in mockery of the anti-Israel narrative that ignores armed terrorists by focusing on minors—including those who engage in terrorism.

Staiman, a professional actor, director/producer and singer, has Lyle star in additional hits across genres, including music videos such as “Intifada in the U.S.A” (500,000 views) spoofing a Miley Cyrus similarly titled number. Then there’s Staiman’s own “Tunnel of Love,” a lustful serenade to former lover and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, AKA “the George Clooney of Khan Younis” who makes Lyle want to “tap that Ham-ass.”




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

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