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Thursday, September 26, 2024

09/26 Links Pt2: The White House’s Evil Hostage Lie—and The Atlantic’s; Stop equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia; A New Holocaust Film Mentions Jews Only Once

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The White House’s Evil Hostage Lie—and The Atlantic’s
Foer writes that “throughout October, Biden-administration officials kept finding themselves struck by the Israeli government’s unwillingness to explore hostage negotiations. Perhaps it was just the chaos that reigned in the aftermath of the attacks, but they began to feel as if there was a stark difference in outlook: Where the Americans were prepared to negotiate with Hamas, the Israelis wanted to obliterate it. Where the Americans worried about hostages dying in captivity, Israel retained confidence in its ability to stage daring rescues.”

I want to pause here and fast-forward to the end of the essay to remind readers of what Foer already knew when he wrote those sentences. “Sullivan wondered if a deal had ever been possible,” Foer writes in the essay’s coda after IDF soldiers have recovered the bodies of six hostages, including a high-profile American. “Hamas had just killed six of its best bargaining chips, an act of nihilism.”

This moment took place ten months after the period in which Foer claims the Israelis thought they could simply pass up a hostage deal and magically rescue 250 people in the goblins’ dungeons under Gaza.

We know now that’s not what happened at all. Hamas wanted to drag out negotiations over hostages before Israeli troops entered Gaza. That way, Yahya Sinwar believed, the invasion might not just be forestalled but avoided completely. Sinwar wanted Israel to flinch and for Biden to step in between the two of them, making an eventual full-scale mission in Gaza close to impossible. Before the ground invasion commenced, the New York Times tells us, “Hamas refused to provide any proof of life about the hostages. Negotiations stalled.” Hamas was bluffing.

What else do we know now? That Hamas wouldn’t actually trade the babies whose diapers it supposedly wanted to avoid changing. We know that, because the youngest hostages taken on Oct. 7 have never returned. Perhaps one day they will, but the likeliest explanation is that Hamas did to inconvenient Jewish babies what the Nazis did to such infants.

Has Foer ever come across another person who would kill a baby to avoid changing its diaper but otherwise is an honest and reliable person whose word you could take to the bank? Has Sullivan? Has Blinken? Have these people lost their minds? Or is it their souls they’ve lost?

Truth be told, we don’t have to fast-forward all the way to the end of the story to know this part is hogwash. Three weeks after Israeli troops entered Gaza, the two sides struck the very hostage deal the Israelis were supposedly avoiding, complete with a “pause” in the fighting.

How did that happen? Well, Biden’s negotiating team had been focused more on getting a ceasefire than on the hostage aspect of the deal. As the Times noted, Biden realized he wouldn’t get the ceasefire without ensuring the release of the hostages too. The ceasefire was Biden’s prize, and he’d only get it because Israeli ground troops had pushed Hamas’s back against a wall. When the IDF surrounded al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which Hamas had taken over to hoard supplies, hold prisoners, and host commanders’ strategy sessions, Sinwar became increasingly willing to strike that deal.

The idea that “the Americans worried about hostages dying in captivity” but the Israelis didn’t is a monstrous, despicable, evil lie—and contemporaneous reporting proves the Americans knew it was a lie ten months ago. Yet here it is, presented to readers as if a revelation.

It is not a revelation. It is a rank falsehood and a disgrace.
Eugene Kontorovich and Mark Goldfeder: Outrage as US DOJ defends UN staffers who collaborated in Hamas’ terror
“No one is above the law,” Kamala Harris says when speaking of her rival, former President Donald Trump.

But the Harris-Biden administration is arguing in federal court that lots of people are above the law — in particular, the many UN employees who helped Hamas build its terror facilities and launch its genocidal pogrom on Oct. 7.

In June, some victims of the Oct. 7 massacre filed suit in New York, where the United Nations is based, against the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, alleging that UNRWA and its officials have aided and abetted Hamas.

Evidence of UNRWA’s wholesale collaboration with the designated terror group is abundant, and goes back years.

“Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don’t see that as a crime,” then-UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen stated in 2004.

Twenty years later, many UNRWA staffers participated directly in the Oct. 7 terror attack, while others imprisoned and tortured the hostages afterward.

The United Nations, which claims to be dedicated to advancing human rights, has pledged that it will waive any claims to immunity for acts of terror.

Nonetheless, it responded to the victims’ lawsuit by invoking immunity for itself and its employees.

And this week, news broke that the United States Department of Justice has joined that effort, filing a submission to the US District Court arguing that both UNRWA and its workers should have “absolute immunity” from suit.

As the first anniversary of Oct. 7 approaches, the DOJ is lawyering for some of the attack’s perpetrators.

The DOJ letter asserts that the UN officials have immunity under the 1945 International Organizations Immunities Act.

Indeed, the United States has historically supported a broad interpretation of UN immunity — but despite significant prior misdeeds, UN agencies have never before been structurally intertwined with a US-designated terror group, or had numerous employees carry out mass atrocities.

And the administration’s defense of the UN-Hamas terrorists is not only ugly — it is legally unnecessary.
Stop equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia
Given that anti-Muslim sentiment is clearly not as significant a problem as anti-Semitism, why is there so much elite focus on Islamophobia?

To answer this, it’s important to understand that campaigns against Islamophobia aren’t really concerned with promoting tolerance towards Muslims. Though the term was first used over a century ago by French colonial officials in Algeria, it acquired its contemporary meaning when Islamic fundamentalists started wielding it against writers critical of Islam, like Salman Rushdie, Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Its main function is to shield Islam, often violently so, from any form of criticism. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader and the man behind the bounty on Rushdie’s head, even labelled unveiled women as ‘Islamophobic’. As French writer Pascal Bruckner explains, the accusation of Islamophobia represents an attempt to stigmatise or even criminalise any critique of Islam as racist. This, in turn, stifles any discussion of Islamic practices and preaching, even at their most radical. The result is the creation of a legal double standard, where some ideologies and political practices can be criticised, while others enjoy privileged immunity.

Those wielding the charge of Islamophobia as a weapon sometimes even elevate protecting Muslims from offence above human life. In 2015, the Islamic Human Rights Commission gave its ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ award to the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo – just weeks after Islamist terrorists had massacred them for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Worryingly, this idea of Islamophobia is increasingly being institutionalised. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 56 countries, has been pushing for Islamophobia to be criminalised worldwide for several decades. Within the EU, the European Network of Equality Bodies is also pushing for states to adopt the ‘counter-Islamophobia toolkit’, which, among other things, recommends the creation of ‘Muslim spaces’.

The more Islamophobia is institutionalised, the more difficult it will be to discuss any aspect of Islam or Islamism. In Germany over recent weeks, there have been fierce debates over the meanings of ‘caliphate’ and ‘genocide’, as well as the significance of the Islamist ‘Tauhid gesture’. These debates would be near-enough impossible if one side could silence the other by having them punished for Islamophobia.

Islamophobia is simply not comparable with anti-Semitism. Islamophobia amounts to a new form of blasphemy, in which any criticism of Islam is prohibited. Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews, an ideology that unites German neo-Nazis with radical Islamists and even climate activists. It is a universal language of loathing, a kind of Esperanto of resentment that flourishes in times of crisis. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, the anti-Semite is a ‘destroyer by vocation, a pure-hearted sadist’ who desires ‘the death of the Jews’.

By equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia, our elites are conflating the hatred of Jews with criticism and mockery of Islam. This conflation undermines the struggle against anti-Semitism. And it empowers Islamic reactionaries.


Mossad stopped over 50 Iran-backed attacks against Jews abroad since Oct. 7 - sources
The volume of global terrorist attacks planned by Iran against Jews and Israelis in foreign countries since Oct. 7 and prevented by the Mossad has at least doubled that of the preceding year, reaching more than 50 such attempted attacks worldwide, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Although the world has learned about a relatively small number of these incidents, there are far more that the world has no idea about.

In September 2023, Mossad Director David Barnea revealed in a speech at Reichman University that the Mossad had thwarted 27 global terrorist incidents in foreign countries which Iran had planned against Jews and Israelis.

The fact that this number has at the very least doubled shows how motivated Tehran has been to harm Jews and Israelis across the globe and the vast resources it has poured into that goal. How did the Mossad thwart attacks against Israelis and Jews abroad?

Sometimes these terrorist attacks are prevented via cooperation between the Mossad and official foreign partner spy services; sometimes the Mossad acts clandestinely and independently in these foreign countries; and sometimes it works with spy agencies from foreign countries which are even partially hostile to Israel or have no diplomatic relations.

Such hostile countries or nations lacking diplomatic relations with Jerusalem have not necessarily prioritized helping Israelis or Jews per se but are affronted by the idea that a foreign actor like Iran would carry out a terrorist operation on their sovereign territory, regardless of the target victim.

A very small and incomplete list of countries that the Mossad has worked with includes Cyprus, Germany, Denmark, and Turkey.

In May, the Mossad announced that it had also helped thwart terrorist attacks against Jews in Sweden and Belgium.
Seth Mandel: Anatomy of a Blood Libel: The ‘Tuna-Can Cluster Bombs’
Israel’s pager plot in Lebanon has rekindled the debate over “booby-traps” and with it a popular blood libel—that the Jewish state not only rigs Hezbollah beepers but toys for tots and other civilian items.

This is a good opportunity to deconstruct one specific example, allowing readers a look at how these smears originate and travel into the bloodstream of public discourse.

On January 22, a Palestinian activist with nearly a million followers on X alone posted in Arabic a video that purportedly showed bombs that were made to look like cans of food. The idea was that Israel was booby-trapping tuna can-style containers to kill and maim hungry Palestinian children. The same day, the activist media hub MintPress News posted the video, claiming: “These particular canisters strongly resemble canned food and explode when opened.” Other popular disinformation accounts followed suit.

The next day, On January 23, the Times of Gaza—a verified news account on Twitter—posted a version of the video purporting to demonstrate the same claim: “Israeli jets dropped explosives disguised as cans of food to lure in displaced people facing starvation in southern Gaza.” Quds News Network, a popular Palestinian account, posted the video and added a claim: “Two children, one man, and one woman were killed by the fake cans.” EyeOnPalestine, another popular account, followed. So did a Lebanese diplomat. The Quds network video had millions of views. The lie went viral.

A few days later, France24 definitively debunked the absurd story. The network asked Hadj Boudani, a former French soldier and explosives expert, why “food cans” would have the words “Fuze (sic) mine” on them. Boudani explained that these cans were actually housing for a fuse that detonates anti-vehicle land mines.

Seth Mandel: Fighting Campus Anti-Semitism Requires More Help from the Biden Administration
Which is to say, if you’re looking for a single takeaway from the report, either of those headlines works. But the real problem is not the investigations themselves but their inherent limits. This can be seen clearly in a very good section of the Lippman report on the application of Title XI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.”

Because the Act doesn’t mention religion, colleges have long been able to skate by on the idea that discrimination against Jews qua Jews is bad but not a violation of those students’ civil rights, which would jeopardize the institution’s federal funding.

There is no question Jews are being openly and intentionally discriminated against on campus, especially since the post-Oct. 7 surge in anti-Semitism led to encampments student activists that physically block Jews from accessing public portions of campus. But is it a violation of the Civil Rights Act? Should schools lose their funding?

That’s not a question a third-party review commissioned by the governor can answer definitively. Or, rather, a commission’s answer to that question isn’t enforceable. For the record, the answer is yes: The Israel-specific nature of the anti-Semitism obviously accords it with the “national origin” part of the law, and “Jews aren’t a race” is a copout that is irrelevant to the question of whether much anti-Semitism is racial in nature, which it is and has been since the beginning of time.

If you want to rule that these actions do not violate Title XI, you must get creative. And that means you are putting effort into getting around the application of civil-rights law specifically for Jews—which is kind of the whole problem in the first place, isn’t it?

But Judge Lippman can’t take away CUNY’s federal funds. The Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education, however, can make that happen. And it can also get the Justice Department involved. But, as David Bernstein has noted, the Department of Education “does not appear to have opened a single investigation of its own, nor has it referred even the most egregious cases to the Justice Department for potential civil litigation. Every lawsuit that has been filed has been the product of private rather than government efforts.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland has neglected his duties regarding Jewish Americans, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and his boss, President Biden, appear in no rush to help, either. Until the federal government decides that Jews, too, deserve the protection of the law, not much is going to change.
Brendan O'Neill: The BBC’s shameful moral cowardice over Hamas
The BBC has reached a new low. It has tumbled further down the well of moral relativism. This week, it will broadcast a new documentary about Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October last year. But according to the doc’s director, the version the Beeb is showing ‘won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. If this is true, if the BBC can’t even park its weird aversion to calling Hamas terrorists when it is airing a film about Hamas’s butchery of the young at a festival in the desert, then that shames Britain.

We Will Dance Again tells the story of what the pogromists of Hamas did when they happened upon the Nova festival in the Negev desert during their invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023. Combining harrowing testimony from survivors with graphic footage of Hamas’s barbarism, it paints a grim picture of arguably the worst event of the pogrom: 364 people were slaughtered at Nova. Yet according to the director, Yariv Mozer, one thing will be missing from the version us Brits will see: the T-word.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter on ‘what they kept’ and ‘what they cut’ from their disturbing film, Mozer says ‘the version [the BBC will] air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. Hinting at his irritation at this alleged omission, Mozer says ‘it was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities’. Then Brits can decide for themselves, he says, ‘if this is a terrorist organisation or not’. Some of us have already decided, of course. The BBC might be reluctant to call the mass murderers of Jews ‘terrorists’, but others are more than happy to do so.

It is not clear from the interview with Mozer if the BBC explicitly instructed him to take out the word terrorist, or if Mozer and his team pre-empted the Beeb’s odd concern about that word and decided to take it out themselves for an easier life. The Jerusalem Post assumes it’s the former: the BBC ‘told director’ to ‘not describe Hamas as “terrorists”’, it says. Yet even if it’s the latter, even if there are tellers of Israelis’ stories out there who get the vibe that you shouldn’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ if you want to appear on the BBC, then that’s still epically embarrassing for Britain.

If this was self-censorship, it’s understandable. After all, for the past year, ever since Hamas visited its racist terror on Israel, the BBC has been pathologically resistant to calling Hamas ‘terrorists’. Even though that’s what they are. There was a storm in the aftermath of the pogrom over the BBC’s linguistic cowardice. Just four days after the pogrom, Beeb big gun John Simpson offered a thin explanation for the corporation’s dodging of the T-word. ‘We don’t take sides’, he said. ‘We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”.’

You don’t? You could have fooled me. The BBC ‘takes sides’ on every culture clash of the modern era, from Brexit (which it hates) to environmentalism (which it loves). As to not ‘talking about “terrorists”’ – explain, then, your references to ‘far-right terrorism’ and your wondering out loud if even incels are representative of a ‘far-right terrorist ideology’. The Beeb does talk about terrorists. Just not where Hamas is concerned. To some of us, its failure to say ‘terrorist’ even in the wake of the worst act of fascistic violence against the Jews since the Holocaust spoke less to its imaginary uber-neutrality than to its kneejerk Israelophobia. It didn’t want to be seen slamming Israel’s haters too hard. That really was it.
Douglas Murray: Sky News has lost its way
Occasionally I am told that I go too hard on the BBC. It is an understandable gripe which I sometimes hear from disgruntled journos from Broadcasting House. So let me start by saying that, as an equal-opportunities insulter, I would like to put on the record how completely rancid Sky News in the UK has become.

To give an idea of where Sky UK has gone wrong since being sold, allow me to highlight one story as the channel reported it this week. After the targeted strikes on Hezbollah operatives via their pagers and walkie-talkies, Sky ran a story headlined: ‘Hezbollah has been provoked like never before by Israel and may be tempted to unleash its firepower.’

That is truly fascinating framing. For it suggests that the terrorists of Hezbollah should be allowed to fire thousands of rockets into Israel with impunity, and that if Israel responds to this – even in the most targeted and personal way possible – it is being ‘provocative’. Poor Hezbollah. It’s just too beastly – can’t it be allowed to fire missiles at Israeli civilians in peace?

Much of the broadcast media in Britain has been similarly skewy. The BBC news website last week led with ‘Lebanon reels from two days of device attacks’. ITV News lamented not just the pager and walkie-talkie explosions but Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah arms dumps. Presenting these as though they were strikes on civilian targets, ITV – in its own footage – showed the secondary explosions in the buildings Israel had hit. Which gives the game away, surely?

I have seen all this before. I was on the Israel-Lebanon border 18 years ago during the last Israel-Hezbollah war. Back in 2006 much of the media played the same game. Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into Israel, Israel responded and before you knew it the world was running headlines about Israel striking Lebanon. I remember being in a hospital on the Israeli side of the border that had been hit by Hezbollah. There was no mention of this in the next day’s media outside of Israel but there were plenty of reports about Israeli ‘aggression’ against Hezbollah.
Ludicrous U.N. speeches: Brazil, Colombia focus on Israel, ignore Venezuela crisis
The speeches by the leaders of Brazil and Colombia on the opening day of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday were pathetic.

They condemned Israel for the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and lamented the political crisis in Sudan. However, they totally ignored one of the world’s biggest refugee crises unfolding in their own backyard: Venezuela.

Neither Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva nor his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro denounced Venezuela’s dictator Nicolรกs Maduro for having recently stolen his country’s elections, or for the fact that his death squads have killed thousands of peaceful protesters in recent years; or that about 8 million Venezuelans — more than 20% of the country’s population — have fled their homeland since he took power in 2013.

Lula and Petro’s omission of Venezuela in their U.N. speeches was even more preposterous if you consider that they proposed grandiose plans to solve the war in Ukraine and in the Middle East, as if they were major players or had some influence in those parts of the world.

Lula touted a joint Brazilian plan with China to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which critics say would pretty much allow Russia to keep part of the Ukrainian territory it invaded. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called the plan “destructive.”

Lula started his speech saluting the Palestinian delegation at the assembly, and blamed mostly Israel for the war against Palestinian terrorist groups that have been calling for Israel’s annihilation and attacking it for many years. The Brazilian leader also lamented the suffering of the people of Ukraine, Sudan and Yemen, and denounced the United States for keeping Cuba on its list of states that promote terrorism.
Abbas calls Temple Mount ‘exclusive property of Muslims’ in speech to UN General Assembly
In an address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday morning, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas called the holiest Jewish site—the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—the “exclusive property of Muslims” and referred to Israel as a “terrorist state” that does not deserve membership in the United Nations.

Abbas, whose presidential mandate expired in 2009–the last time P.A. elections were held–told those watching that “the world is responsible” for what he asserted were crimes against humanity taking place in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s defensive war against Hamas.

He claimed that Israel “took advantage of what happened” on Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a massive assault in southern Israel—murdering, raping and torturing 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage—to “launch a genocide” in the Gaza Strip. Abbas also said Israel has just launched a second “war of genocide” in Lebanon, calling into question what kind of hostilities the Jewish state could be involved in that wouldn’t qualify as one.

He also referred to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as a terrorist for calling for a Third Temple to be built on the mount.

Abbas saved a heavy dose of criticism for the Biden administration. He said he “regrets” that the White House “furnished Israel with deadly weapons it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians” while utilizing its veto power in the U.N. Security Council three times to thwart efforts to force a ceasefire on Israel with no guarantee that its hostages would be released from Gaza.

“As long as the U.S. is supporting” Israel, posed Abbas, “why not keep going?”

He also took Washington to task for denying the Palestinians full membership in the United Nations. “We don’t deserve membership in the eyes of America,” he stated. “I don’t understand.”

Abbas did acknowledge protesters across America who “are marching in the streets.” Many of them have called for the end of Israel, including its inhabitants, and have expressed explicit support for terror groups; have harassed Jews verbally and physically; and have disrupted Jewish life, including on college campuses.

“We are grateful to them,” said Abbas.

He laid out a 12-step laundry list of requests and demands for a “day-after” scenario, referring to the end of the war against Hamas and end of the terror group’s governance of Gaza. Those measures have all been laid out in one form or another in various public statements by the P.A., the United Nations and other international officials.


Yemen’s Sidelined Leader Scolds U.N. for Minimizing Iran Role in Houthi Chaos
The de jure leader of Yemen, President Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi of the “Presidential Leadership Council,” reproached the United Nations and greater international community for abandoning his administration in its decade-old civil war against Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in his address to the General Assembly on Monday.

The Houthis attacked the nation’s capital, Sana’a, in 2014, seizing control and forcing the legitimate government of the country, which al-Alimi represents, into the southern port city of Aden. With the aid of the Iranian Islamist regime, Houthi jihadists have dramatically expanded their influence in Yemen in the past decade. Following the siege and massacre of hundreds of people in Israel on October 7 by fellow Iranian terror proxy Hamas, the Houthis declared war on Israel – despite not being a legitimate government entity – and launched a campaign against global commercial shipping.

Houthi leaders claim that their piracy attacks on random commercial ships is targeted only at vessels engaging in commerce with Israel – or, following airstrikes by American and British forces, ships affiliated with those countries – but, in reality, they have bombed ships with no clear association to any of their targets. On some occasions, Houthi terrorists have bombed ships affiliated with countries they explicitly promised not to attack, such as Russia and China. In one instances, the Houthis attacked a ship carrying grain to their patrons in Iran.

As of September, the Houthis have launched over 200 attacks on ships in and near the Red Sea, hitting over 77 commercial ships and sinking two of them.

The United Nations, al-Alimi denounced, had done little to limit the damage of the Houthi campaign, and almost nothing to support the legitimate government’s return to uncontested power.


UNRWA adds insult to injury
In response to a lawsuit filed in the New York Federal District Court on June 24 against the U.N. Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and others for damages suffered by so many as a result of UNRWA employees participating in the Oct. 7 massacre, the U.N. defendants are claiming immunity and moving to dismiss.

If this wholly unjust position were not immoral and absurd enough, the U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly weighed in and shockingly told the court: “Because the U.N. has not waived immunity in this case, its subsidiary, UNRWA, retains full immunity, and the lawsuit against UNRWA should be dismissed due to lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”

Why is this callous and conclusory statement relevant to the question of whether UNRWA and its employees are responsible for their outrageous criminal acts; it’s little more than a galling nonsequitur.

To put this in perspective, consider that UNRWA employees do not have absolute immunity as a matter of law. The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, as to U.N. officials—other than the secretary-general and assistant secretaries-general, and experts performing missions for the United Nations—expressly provides only for limited functional immunity (under articles V-section 18 and VI-section 22), not for unlimited immunity.

In essence, when acting in an official capacity and performing their job, they have immunity. Is anyone suggesting their job description includes committing murder, rape, kidnapping and other atrocities? How, then, can anyone blithely assert that these defendants have immunity?

Indeed, even UNRWA has in the past taken the position that its employees do not have unlimited blanket immunity. In the case of Saqer v. Commissioner-General of UNRWA (before the UNRWA Dispute Tribunal, judgment dated Aug. 15, 2021), one of its employees demanded that UNRWA assert her immunity to defeat an obligation she had undertaken to a Jordanian hospital for the cost of treating her husband’s self-inflicted wound. UNRWA flat-out said there was no immunity. This was hardly a case of her acting in an official capacity within the purview of her employment.

The German Federal Court of Justice has gone even further in defining the limits of functional immunity. It has held that there is no immunity for committing war crimes like genocide, torture and enforced disappearance.


Foreign Relations Committee leaders trade blame over canceled ICC sanctions vote
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee canceled a scheduled Wednesday vote on bipartisan legislation sanctioning the International Criminal Court for pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli officials, extending a committee deadlock over the bill.

Committee leaders are trading blame about why the meeting — known as a markup — was canceled. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the committee’s Democratic chairman, said Republicans filed an overwhelming number of amendments and weren’t responsive to his efforts to discuss the situation.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the panel’s top Republican, said that lawmakers had a deal to vote on the legislation and a meeting on the schedule and that he had no warning about the meeting falling apart.

“It was kind of strange. We had an understanding. They filed their bill and I filed my amendment to it, and then they filed 30 amendments to their own bill, which would be a major expansion of the agenda of our committee for that markup, as well as political votes,” Cardin told Jewish Insider on Wednesday, adding that the GOP amendments were “not serious for getting an ICC bill to the finish line.”

“I tried to reach Sen. Risch for several days and was unable to get him, literally was not able to talk to him for several days, in an effort to try to find a way that we could either have an orderly markup or a bipartisan bill, either one. I was prepared to try to find a way forward just to have a markup that was not just a political gotcha,” Cardin said.

Cardin added that he “had to give notice to members” about the meeting the night before, and “the agenda fell apart” as a result.

After months of gridlock, Democrats had agreed to allow a vote on the House-passed ICC sanctions bill, demanded by Republicans; Cardin opposes the House bill as passed, and the White House opposes sanctions on the ICC.

“We’d like to get a bill done if we can. It requires a give and take, but it always should be bipartisan. Look, we’re going to be stronger if we’re together with the Biden administration on the ICC issues,” Cardin said.
Hamas Backer Qatar Joins U.S. Visa Waiver Program
Latest Developments
The U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security admitted Qatar to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program on September 24, allowing the emirate’s 330,000 citizens to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa (Qatar’s total population of just under 3.1 million is largely composed of disenfranchised migrant workers.) The emirate joined the southeast Asian country of Brunei as the second Muslim country to participate in the program. “Qatar’s fulfillment of the stringent security requirements to join the Visa Waiver Program will deepen our strategic partnership and enhance the flow of people and commerce between our two countries,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said that “Qatar’s participation in the program increases information sharing regarding one of the world’s busiest travel and transfer hubs, strengthening the security of the United States.”

Despite its close partnership with the United States, Qatar is a known host and supporter of Islamist organizations, including Hamas, the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Expert Analysis
“Homeland Security should not be granting favors to a regime that hosts Hamas and the Taliban. If you harbor and provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations and other designated terrorist entities, you should not qualify for the Visa Waiver Program.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

“For almost a year, Qatar has failed to broker a hostage deal in Gaza while continuing to host Hamas. Instead of rewarding Qatar by admitting it into the Visa Waiver Program, the Biden administration needs to get tough. That means exerting pressure on Doha to extradite Hamas leaders, assessing Qatar’s progress — or lack thereof — in combatting terror finance, and reviewing Qatar’s Major Non-NATO Ally status.” — Natalie Ecanow, FDD Research Analyst

Qatar and Hamas
Qatar sided with Hamas and endorsed its takeover of Gaza in 2007. Since then, Doha has provided political and financial assistance to the Islamist group, pumping at least $1.8 billion into Gaza’s Hamas-run government. In 2012, Hamas opened a political office in Doha, where several of its senior leaders live in luxury. Meanwhile, Qatar remains a permissive jurisdiction for terror financiers. In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Egypt severed ties with Qatar and imposed a blockade on the Gulf nation, citing Qatar’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that gave rise to Hamas.

Despite enabling Hamas and holding “Israel alone responsible” for Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, Qatar has positioned itself as a mediator between Hamas and Israel with the assent of the United States. On September 24, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani falsely accused Israel of “genocide” and described the late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh as a legitimate political leader in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly.

U.S.-Qatar Relationship
President Joe Biden designated Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally in 2022. Qatar also serves as a strategic hub for U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf region, hosting al-Udeid Air Force Base — the largest U.S. base in the region. However, since October 7, several U.S. lawmakers have encouraged the Biden administration to downgrade U.S.-Qatar relations given Doha’s support for Hamas. On May 1, Reps. Ann Wagner (R-MO) and Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced the bipartisan Reviewing Qatar’s Major Non-NATO Ally Status Act. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate on April 10 by Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC).

U.S. concern over Qatar’s relationship with Hamas is also reflected in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was released on July 9. Specifically, section 1287 of the bill would require the secretary of defense to “submit a report and provide a briefing to the congressional defense committees on the operational value of al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, taking into consideration the relationship of the Government of Qatar with Hamas and other terrorist organizations.”
Samantha Power would be ‘disappointed’ if USAID staff pushed Israel less
Nawaz added that some of Power’s staffers “have asked you about what they see as the Biden administration’s being complicit in what they see as genocide being waged by Israel in Gaza.”

“One of the things they point out is the fact that you wrote a book on genocide—they’ve called on you to speak out or to resign,” Nawaz said. “How do you handle that kind of frustration within your own agency, and what are you telling your staffers?”

Power said that USAID “is an incredibly mission-driven agency, where people come to work every day to save lives, to improve lives. It’s honestly inspiring to work, including among those people who criticize me, they’re incredibly talented people.”

“They could work in the private sector. Instead, they come to work every day to help people like the people who are suffering in Gaza. More than 40,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza, more than 13,000 children, more than 300 aid workers,” added Power, who has drawn criticism in the past for citing unverified Hamas statistics.

“I would honestly be disappointed if my staff were not in churn and pressing for more, and, I just feel lucky that I’m in the government, in the room, engaging the Israelis, working with the team that’s pushing for a ceasefire,” Power said. “Because fundamentally that’s what’s needed most of all. Because, clearly, none of us can be satisfied with the way things are in Gaza.”

In late February, Power did not mention Hamas stealing aid or posing a danger to aid workers when she discussed the challenges of operating in Gaza.

“Aid workers are confronting extreme danger every day—from IDF military operations, organized criminals and even desperate civilians increasingly overrunning trucks,” she wrote, “and still they are working tirelessly to help those in need.”
Law association prioritizes anti-Israel propaganda over debate
Developing the ability to engage in vigorous debate and oppositional advocacy is central to legal education. So why is American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) so averse to a diversity of opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

For its upcoming International Law Weekend (ILW) 2024, ABILA is set to host a panel titled “Palestine, Israel and International Law: The Long View, and Since October 2023.” Eight speakers are listed for the event. All eight share a sharply anti-Israel viewpoint. The panel isn’t a discussion; it’s a propaganda session.

It echoes a similar incident covered by CAMERA two years ago. During ILW 2022, ABILA held a panel titled “Racism and the Crime of Apartheid in International Law.” All three speakers were known anti-Israel activists obsessed with labeling Israel as an “apartheid” state. After CAMERA and its supporters wrote to the sponsors of ILW 2022, ABILA eventually relented and added a single dissenting voice, but only after adding a fourth anti-Israel activist to the panel.

The Speakers
ABILA claims that “[t]his year’s ILW is focused on engaged, interactive, and inclusive discussions … .” Based on the “Palestine, Israel and International Law” panel, ABILA’s commitment to “inclusive discussions” ends with the Jewish state. Consider the eight panelists.

First is Adil Haque, who has obsessively promoted the “genocide” libel against Israel over the past year.

Second is Tamara Tamimi, a policy member of the anti-Israel organization Al Shabaka. Her profile name on X (formerly Twitter) currently reads: “#StopTheGenocide-Tamara Tamimi.”

Third is Karin Loevy, an enthusiastic supporter of the BDS movement against Israel.

Fourth is Rabea Eghbariah, who authored the article “The Ongoing Nakba: Toward a Legal Framework for Palestine,” which, after being rejected by the Harvard Law Review, was revoked by the Columbia Law Review after it was published without going through the normal review process. The outlandish article accused Israel of “apartheid” and a slew of other alleged sins.

Fifth is Ralph Wilde, who has worked as a legal adviser for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the notorious anti-Israel organization Al Haq. More recently, he served as senior counsel and advocate for the League of Arab States in an advisory opinion case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Sixth is Ata Hindi, another Al Shabaka policy member. Earlier this year, Hindi was a featured speaker at a protest outside of Tulane University’s Hillel because it was hosting a dinner with an Israeli soldier.

Seventh is Balkees Jarrah, an associate director at Human Rights Watch, which has built a campaign based on lies to slander Israel with the charge of “apartheid.” Jarrah herself has promoted these lies.

Finally, there is Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, known for waging lawfare against Israel. Her very first post on X after the Oct. 7 massacre was a retweet claiming that Israel is creating a “preemptive excuse for genocide” by calling the massacre “Israel’s 9/11.” By Oct. 16, Shamas declared that Israeli self-defense was already a “genocide.”
An Invitation to the Anti-Zionists
For now, mixer on hypnotic low, I’m puzzling over how to face the troubling situation at hand: Two writers I don’t know just sabotaged our scheduled panel at a literary festival in my hometown, on purported grounds that they refuse to share space with a “Zionist.”

(Me!)

How odd, to be a loathsome thing in the imaginations of people you’ve never met.

And … I can’t help but wonder if either of these people actually knows the definition of Zionism.

Let me help: Zionism is the belief that the State of Israel has the right to exist. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people (literally aka “Israel”) has the right to self-determination, peace, and safety in our ancestral homeland. Zionism precludes no other peaceful nationalist ambitions or aspirations.

There are as many flavors and shades of Zionism as there are Jews alive on planet Earth. Zionism is nonbinary. Zionism is de-colonization. Zionism means, not to put too fine a point on it, that there is a place where people like me can (theoretically) exist free from the precise bullshit at hand.

Use of the word “Zionist” as a permissible pejorative is a tool of brainwashed propagandists to dehumanize the people of Israel, wherever we reside, and to blame “us” for the horrific ongoing violence in an achingly, tragically, nightmarishly endless regional conflict, the latest conflagrations of which have inflamed many a conspiracist imagination and inspired many a nihilistic trauma tourist.

This, it is apparently not needless to say, helps zero Palestinian civilians or Muslims or Christian Arabs or Bedouins or Druze or assimilated diaspora quasi-Jews or Western gentiles looking for cheap thrills in anarchist drag. It brings zero relief to anyone directly impacted by this intractable, gruesome conflict. Not in Gaza, not in the Galilee, not in the Negev, not in Judea or Samaria, not in East Jerusalem. Not in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or Iran.

It simply further entrenches a stale, appalling, hopeless status quo.

It does, however, allow a couple of writers who live in New York and Connecticut to play at a form of primal social-political-personal pseudo-identitarian catharsis (which I guess isn’t nothing!).

Oh, the short, half-life payoffs of misplaced nationalism: It’s like a drug, in how precious little it asks of you.

In the past year, our tribe (I wonder if it helps to categorize “us” thusly … in that no reasonable person could feel politically/culturally/personally entitled to spew bigotry toward, say, Native Americans) has witnessed a tsunami of historical erasure, misinformation, and confusion about Judaism in general and Israel in particular.

Most shocking has been the specter of “allies” in so many progressive movements—anti-racism, queer liberation, art, feminism, education, pronoun-preferences, equality, sex-positivity, diversity, size-inclusive slow fashion, witty tote bags—eagerly, carelessly parroting some of the laziest, most twisted antisemitic ideas and incitement known to human history.

People like me—which is to say “Zionists,” which is to say Jews with a basic understanding of, interest in, and emotional/intellectual/familial investment in communal care for lived Judaism and “other” Jews—have been screaming about this for almost a year, now.


Reexamining a Century of Loyalty
My lifelong voting history has been a perpetuation of my family’s Democratic loyalty going back to the second decade of the 20th century. Like a great many liberal American Jewish families, the roots of this loyalty spring from my grandparents’ toiling in sweatshops on the Lower East Side, identification with the Bund (Jewish labor movement), membership in the Workmen’s Circle, and reading the once-vibrant socialist Yiddish press. I myself had a subscription for many years to the weekly English-language remnant of The Jewish Daily Forward. But a few years ago I felt it drifting away from support of Israel, and so canceled my subscription.

I’ve been witnessing that same change of course within the Democratic Party, spurred on by the rise of the overtly anti-Semitic “Squad.” During the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the Biden-Harris administration’s slow-walking or withholding of essential munitions in Israel’s time of greatest need–during an existential war–felt like a betrayal. This last straw has led me to reexamine my lifelong loyalty to the Democratic Party.

Although I still support traditional Democratic issues such as abortion rights, living wages, and antidiscrimination, I will now assign them secondary status as I decide which party to vote for. I’ll reserve primary status for the much more pressing issues of anti-Semitism careening out of control and the survival of the State of Israel.

Judging by her public statements, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris supports the anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian protesters who disrupted American campuses last spring and are resuming their protests and overt harassment of Jewish students and faculty now. Her reaction to those protesters: “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.”

Exactly what “emotion” was she referring to? Should Palestine be free of Jews from the river to the sea? Are murdering, raping, burning alive, and beheading civilians an acceptable form of warfare? Are harassment of and physical violence against American Jewish students a permitted form of protest?

Regarding her stance on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, she participated in formulating the current administration’s policy. In her recent interview with CNN she declares her unwavering commitment to Israel’s defense and its right to defend itself. That’s intended to reassure us Jews. Indeed, the current Democratic administration has dispatched massive naval assets to the Middle East. So far they have been used to help Israel only defensively by intercepting incoming missiles from Iran and Yemen, but not offensively to deter Hezbollah from launching salvos of rockets daily at northern Israel.

In the next breath she undercuts her “unwavering” commitment to Israel’s self-defense by cautioning, “And how it does so matters,” then laments, “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed and we have got to get a deal done.” The innuendo is that Israel has been intentionally bombing civilians. But this is defamatory because she knows that Israel has been going to great lengths to keep civilians out of harm’s way to an extent unprecedented in urban warfare, all the while neglecting to condemn Hamas for systematically putting Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.
Battleground Michigan: A Tale of Two Communities Divided by War
Historically, both the Jewish and Arab communities in Michigan lean left. There are just over 100,000 Jews in the state—over 60 percent of whom identify as Democrats. There are nearly 400,000 Arab Americans, 250,000 of whom are Muslim. More than half the residents of Dearborn have Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, and the city had been a stronghold for the left. ​​In the 2020 presidential primary, 62 percent of Democrats in Dearborn voted for Bernie Sanders, compared to just 32.5 percent who supported Biden. Biden still went on to win over nearly 70 percent of heavily Arab American counties across Michigan in the general election.

But October 7 has shaken previous alliances, making once-ardent supporters on all sides feel disenfranchised by the political parties they once supported. And there’s no clear way either candidate can win over both communities.

Dearborn embodies this sentiment. The city’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud (no relation to Abed Hammoud), refused to meet with Biden’s campaign staff ahead of the state’s presidential primary because of the administration’s support of Israel. Weeks later, 57 percent of Dearborn residents would vote “uncommitted” in February’s Democratic presidential primary—compared to just 40 percent who voted for Biden—a clear message that if Biden wanted to keep his supporters from 2020, he’d need to hear their demands.

Since Biden dropped out and Harris entered the race, it’s unclear if she’s had much luck regaining those voters.

In her public statements, Harris promotes a ceasefire at the same time she calls for the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. But her insistence that Israel has a “right to defend itself” against enemies such as Hamas or Iran—as she spoke about at the Democratic convention last month—continues to alienate Dearborn’s “uncommitted” voters. It didn’t help when the Democratic National Committee declined to invite a Palestinian speaker, even one who would endorse Harris, to speak at last month’s convention.

Last week, the Uncommitted Movement released a statement discouraging their supporters from casting a “third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country’s broken electoral college system.” The group stopped short, however, of endorsing Harris.

Recent polling from the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows Stein ahead with Muslim Michigan voters, with 40 percent of respondents backing her, followed by Trump with 18 percent and Harris at 12 percent.

The most prominent Muslim for Trump is the mayor of nearby Hamtramck, Yemeni immigrant Amer Ghalib, who recently endorsed the former president, saying that Trump wants “to end the chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Hamtramck is America’s only city governed entirely by Muslims—and has been a fixture of the country’s culture wars, especially in schools and libraries.


New York City Mayor Eric Adams indicted in Turkish bribery scheme
Federal prosecutors indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams on five corruption charges on Thursday, alleging that the Turkish government bribed him with more than $100,000 in luxury gifts.

Adams, the first sitting New York City mayor to be criminally indicted, denied the charges and said at a press conference with black clergy members that he would not resign.

“I ask New York to wait to hear our defense before making any judgments,” he said. “My attorneys will take care of the case, so I can take care of the city. My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.”

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, laid out the charges against Adams at a separate press conference on Thursday.

“As we allege, year after year after year, he kept the public in the dark,” Williams said. “He told the public he received no gifts, even though he was secretly being showered with them.”

Adams faces up to 45 years in prison for one count of conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals and commit wire fraud and bribery, one count of wire fraud, two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and a count of soliciting and accepting a bribe, per the Justice Department.

The five charges are the latest scandal to hit the Adams administration, with more than a dozen New York City officials under investigation, charged or resigning amid multiple foreign and domestic corruption investigations.

According to the 57-page indictment, Adams “sought and accepted” improper benefits and illegal campaign contributions from Turkey dating back nearly a decade to his tenure as Brooklyn borough president.


Slotkin Spox Attended Anti-Israel West Bank Tour Led by Member of Terrorist Group
Michigan's Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin sent her spokesman on an anti-Israel tour of the West Bank led by a member of a terrorist group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), that played a role in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

Slotkin’s communications director, Austin Cook, attended the eight-day congressional staff delegation trip to the West Bank in August 2022.

The trip—sponsored by a group called the Rebuilding Alliance and co-led by the Holy Land Trust, which was described in the agenda as the "partner in the planning of this delegation"—also included meetings with the lawyers for a Palestinian terrorist imprisoned for a stabbing attack, anti-Israel NGOs, and groups leading a global boycott campaign against Israel. The trip did not include any meetings with pro-Israel officials.

The group's tour guide was Elias Deis, the executive director of the Holy Land Trust, a copy of the trip agenda filed with the House Committee on Ethics showed. Deis is also a city councilman in the West Bank who ran on the DFLP's party ticket, according to Palestinian media reports and his social media posts. Deis was listed as a member of a DFLP delegation that visited Ma'an News Agency in February 2022, six months before the congressional trip, according to a report by NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel watchdog group.

The DFLP, a Marxist-Leninist bloc founded in 1968, is sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control as a "specially designated global terrorist" group. It is also a designated terrorist group in Israel and has helped carry out numerous terrorist attacks, including the Oct. 7 massacre.

The co-organizer of the congressional delegation, the Holy Land Trust, was founded by Palestinian Christian Sami Awad and says it is "fully committed to nonviolence as a means to resisting and ending occupation." The group has led leadership development programs for Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups. Awad has said that while he supports "nonviolence," it is "not a substitute for the armed struggle."

Slotkin, a U.S. House member since 2019, personally signed off on the junket and a copy of the meeting agenda one month prior to the trip, according to a gift travel disclosure form filed with the House Committee on Ethics.

The news is likely to raise questions about Slotkin’s stance on Israel. The Democratic Senate candidate has sought to placate progressive voters and the state’s large Arab population by coming out early in favor of an Israeli ceasefire while still claiming to be a strong proponent of Israel and national security. Slotkin is facing off against Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a former congressman, in the highly competitive race.


Gaza War takes center stage at News and Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony
The 45th News and Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony, held on Wednesday evening in New York by the American Television Academy, was designed to be a dazzling and festive event. However, it was marked by the serious content showcased throughout the evening, including scenes from battlefields in Sudan and Ukraine, the global refugee crisis, drug and unregulated weapons epidemics in the United States, threats of global warming, and, notably, the war in Gaza, which took center stage.

CNN emerged as the big winner of the night, earning numerous awards, primarily for its coverage of the October 7 massacre and the subsequent attack on Gaza. Yet, the event's true heroes, according to various speakers, were the Palestinian journalists who lost their lives in the line of duty. "Journalism is not a crime," declared some of the winning creators on stage. Among them was Bisan Owda, a young Gazan who received an Emmy for her web series "I Am Bisan from Gaza and I Am Still Alive."

Owda, 25, has become one of the prominent voices of Gaza residents under IDF attack, with her reports gaining significant resonance through AJ+, a part of the Al Jazeera network. In August, members of the organization Creative Community for Peace (including Haim Saban, Debra Messing, and Sherry Lansing) requested the American Academy disqualify Owda's nomination due to suspicions of her affiliation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. The American Television Academy rejected the request, stating there was no evidence of her belonging to the organization. Al Jazeera expressed its support for her amid "attempts to silence her reports from Gaza." Ultimately, Owda won the award for her reporting from Al-Shifa Hospital, recognized as the best short hard news story.

"This award is proof of the strength of one woman with one iPhone who survived nearly a year of bombings," said John Lawrence, an AJ+ producer who accepted the award on Owda's behalf. "More than a hundred Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza, including some of our colleagues from Al Jazeera. Their West Bank office was shut down under gunpoint last week. We thank you, the international journalism community, for supporting Bisan and the AJ+ team, and we urge you to join our call that journalism is not a crime." Al Jazeera also won another award in a completely different category for climate and weather coverage with the report "The Shark Fin Hunters," broadcast as part of the network's investigative program Fault Lines. Lead reporter John Rushing thanked the audience, praised Owda, and read aloud the names of several Al Jazeera journalists killed by the IDF, including Shireen Abu Akleh.

Members of the British Channel 4 team, who won the International Emmy for news coverage for their investigative series "Inside Gaza: Israel and Hamas at War," also saluted the Al Jazeera journalists. "I want to thank the other nominees, especially Al Jazeera, who have shown extraordinary commitment and lost many of their reporters during the war in Gaza," said host Matt Frei after receiving the award. "I want to remind you that 160 journalists have died in this war over the past year.

"Therefore, we are there to bear witness, and the more access we have to Gaza, the better," he said.


Are Anti-Israel Protests Plaguing Your School? That’s Likely Because It Has a Faculty for Justice in Palestine Chapter, Report Finds
The surge in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses is particularly pronounced at schools that have Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters, according to a new report that found Jewish students at those schools are over seven times more likely to face physical violence.

The report, released Thursday by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonpartisan organization that works to combat anti-Semitism, found that FJP chapters play a pivotal role in driving—and protecting—anti-Israel student activism. Universities with FJP chapters are 7.3 times more likely to experience physical violence directed at Jewish students than those without, the report found. Encampments at those schools, meanwhile, last 4.7 times longer, while anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions are 4.9 times more likely to pass.

The findings show that there's more to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic protests at America's top universities than radical student activists and outside agitators. Anti-Israel faculty members at schools such as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania have also mobilized in the wake of Oct. 7, targeting the Jewish state in statements that accuse Israel of "colonialism," "racism," and "genocide" and rallying behind students who hold disruptive—and often illegal—protests.

AMCHA assessed the strength of FJP chapters at schools nationwide and found that Columbia and Penn house two of the most active. The school's chapters have combined to issue 35 statements and host 32 events in the wake of Hamas's terror attack on Israel.

In May, for example, professors with Columbia FJP went on strike in solidarity with anti-Israel student protesters who were arrested for violently occupying a campus building.

The Penn FJP chapter's founding statement, meanwhile, calls Israel’s existence an "occupation" and blames Hamas terrorism on Israeli "state violence, colonialism, anti-Palestinian racism, and genocide." The group also states that activists at Penn have never called for the "genocide of the Jewish people," though Penn faculty members have defended Hamas terrorism.

The Penn faculty group was also responsible for a January "die-in" protest that prevented students from entering Penn’s main campus building in violation of school rules. And on Wednesday, Penn FJP falsely accused Israel of a Beirut bombing that had no connection to the Jewish state. "This is what happens when the U.S. gives its precious ally a carte blanche," the group wrote in a social media post that showed an explosion from 2020.

While FJP chapters were present at some American universities before Oct. 7, many were established in the wake of the attacks. There are now more than 100 nationwide.


Washington Gov. Inslee condemns antisemitic disruption of University of Washington board meeting
In a letter to national Jewish leaders, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee condemned the disruption of a University of Washington Board of Regents meeting earlier this month by anti-Israel demonstrators, who shouted down the CEO of the local Jewish federation.

Jewish leaders accused the Board of Regents of failing to intervene and allow pro-Israel speakers to address the meeting; the board ultimately cut the meeting short as a result of the disorder.

“Public meetings are an essential democratic tradition, and disrupting such a meeting with fear and intimidation is an attempt to undermine our democracy,” Inslee, a Democrat, said in a letter to Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut and Julie Platt, the organization’s board chair. “This incident must not be repeated.”

Fingerhut and Platt wrote to Inslee earlier this month asking him to respond to what they described as “one of the most vile, outrageous displays of antisemitism to be witnessed at a public meeting in the United States of America in recent memory,” condemning the board for failing to ensure that pro-Israel speakers were allowed to speak and calling for the hecklers to be punished.

Inslee said that he’d spoken to Board of Regents members before even receiving the JFNA letter and “stressed that the public’s expectation, as well as my own, is that the university ensures adequate security so that all speakers may be heard and that all meetings can be held in a safe and orderly fashion.”

He said that the board would hold a special meeting to continue discussion, while also offering some defense of the board’s response: “I recognize that the university adjourned the meeting because the disruptive participants made safe and orderly conduct impossible. This conduct resulted in at least one arrest and the investigation into this incident continues.”

Inslee said that “a review is underway” to ensure that the disruption is not repeated, and is speaking to “community members to hear their views,” including state legislators.

“In Washington state, we reject bigotry, incitement of hatred and demonization of religion. I haveconsistently and purposefully condemned anti-Semitism and, as governor, have prioritized the protection of our state employees and institutions from discrimination and violence,” Inslee continued. “We have also stood in defense of democracy in all its forms and in all our public institutions and I will continue to do so.”
New items Harvard submitted to House panel show ‘abysmal follow-through’ on Jew-hatred
Documents that Harvard University sent to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce after the latter said it was being stonewalled and issued a subpoena, suggest that the Ivy League school “likely” violated its responsibilities under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the committee stated on Thursday.

The materials “show that Harvard failed to discipline the overwhelming majority of those involved in the protests, and none of those found responsible for the spring encampment were suspended,” according to the House committee.

“Harvard failed, end of story. These administrators failed their Jewish students and faculty,” stated Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the committee. “They failed to make it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated, and in this case, Harvard may have failed to fulfill its legal responsibilities to protect students from a hostile environment.”

“The only thing administrators accomplished is appeasing radical students, who have almost certainly returned to campus emboldened and ready to repeat the spring semester’s chaos,” Foxx stated. “Harvard must change course immediately.”

The committee added that Harvard considers 52 of the 68 students—76%—referred for punishment for being part of the anti-Israel encampment in “good standing,” and a panel at the Harvard Graduate School of Education didn’t discipline five students who were part of the encampment.


The New York Times likes Iran and its proxies – um, what?
I grew up reading the New York Times. The newspaper was delivered every day to my parent’s house since before I was born. As I think typical among New York Jewish households from my vintage, few institutions carried as much authority and influence as the Times. But that has changed. The paper’s disgraceful coverage of the war in Israel and Gaza over the past year has stripped away any veneer of prestige. Still, old habits die hard, and I can’t help but check the New York Times headlines (even though I now refrain from reading most of the articles).

Every now and then a headline seems so preposterous that I can’t help but read the article – a sort of perverse form of antisemitic clickbait. And that happened with a recent article with the headline: “Iran’s Dilemma: How to Preserve Its Proxies and Avoid Full-Scale War.” The article isn’t unusual for the New York Times, which like many other news organizations has devolved from reporting news to entertaining its readers with pieces that make them feel good by reinforcing false narratives they hold (the narrative for most Times readers being that Israel is fighting an aggressive and unreasonable war of offense against oppressed and defenseless victims). But while typical for the Times, the article crystallized in one junk piece of “news analysis” the ridiculous position the newspaper finds itself in one year into its reporting on this war.

The article seeks to answer the question: how can Iran preserve its “proxies” – the terrorist groups that Tehran funds and arms such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen – without being drawn into a direct confrontation itself? The question is presented like a normal problem that any normal country seeking reasonable goals on the world stage might ask, like how can a country protect its manufacturing sector while avoiding tariffs on imports? Aside from normalizing a desire to arm terrorists as something any country should want to do, the article fails to state the obvious – the best way that Iran could have preserved its “proxies” would have been by not having them go on rampages of rape, murder, hostage-taking, and rocket-firing. I suppose it goes without saying that this terror should continue. So, given that ceasing terror is apparently unreasonable, how can Iran achieve its goals of encircling Israel with terrorists armed to the teeth while at the same time not causing Iran to suffer the costs of a direct conflict? A “reasonable” question, that the reporter comically takes seriously in his attempt at an answer.

The Times analysis is so ludicrous that it warrants a deep dive. It starts with a picture of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, addressing the UN with a caption saying he told the UN that “Israel was seeking to trap his country into a wider war.” The reporter, Steven Erlanger, accepts Pezeshkian’s framing and begins his piece by noting that “Iran has so far refused to be goaded by Israel into a larger regional war.” In Israel, you cannot walk 10 feet without seeing a poster reminding you that our hostages who have not been executed remain in dungeons a year after being kidnapped. There isn’t an Israeli who hasn’t gone to a funeral this year (most of us have gone to several). Israelis in the north have been living in hotels or with friends for the past year as incessant rocket fire has made their homes uninhabitable. If the Times framing of Israel “goading” Iran into a war seems ridiculous, that’s because it is. According to President Pezeshkian and his yes-men at the New York Times, Iran and its proxies should be permitted to terrorize Israelis without consequence, and if Israel responds, then it is we who are baiting them. That logic is upside down to Israelis and sensible people, but perfectly understandable to Mr. Erlanger and his colleagues at the Times.


Palestinian Authority, Hamas to discuss Gaza unity government in Cairo
Palestinian Authority officials are poised to meet with Hamas terrorists in Egypt next week to discuss the day after the war in Gaza, Mohammad Mustafa, the authority’s prime minister, stated on Wednesday.

The scheduled meeting, which Mustafa confirmed in a statement to the Maan news agency, comes amid Saudi reports that the two factions have reached an understanding on a joint “civil administration” in the enclave.

The Palestinian official said the discussion will focus on forging initial agreements “to arrange the situation in the Gaza Strip.” He also confirmed Ramallah’s “readiness to administer the Gaza Strip the day after the war,” Maan reported, “without excluding anyone.”

A Hamas source told Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya on Thursday that the terror group already agreed to a joint administration in the Strip, claiming that Hamas accepted a Palestinian Authority proposal, under which it would cede control of the enclave’s border crossings with Egypt and Israel.

The source told Al-Arabiya that talks were still being held with the authority’s governing Fatah faction to hash out “the form of management” of Gaza.

Among the options that are reportedly under discussion are an independently-led “administrative body,” a “government of technocrats” approved by all Palestinian terror organizations and “the formation of a local body under the supervision of the current government,” meaning Hamas.

In July, Hamas and Fatah announced a unity deal following talks in Beijing. The declaration was approved by 14 terror factions that took part in negotiations hosted by Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister.


Dave Rich: A New Holocaust Film Mentions Jews Only Once
One subject of the above-linked conversation between Reynolds and Novick is the Christian discomfort with the particularism of Jewish self-understanding, and the different ways Christian theologians have responded to its presence in the Old Testament. Perhaps the impulse of some Christians to erase Jewish distinctiveness in favor of universal messages is behind the phenomenon Dave Rich notices in the film Lee. Opening in American cinemas tomorrow, the movie tells the story of Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a photojournalist who covered World War II for Vogue. Rich writes:

Lee is a good film, or at least it’s a film with a very good central performance by the main star (Kate Winslet playing Lee Miller), but it’s also the latest Holocaust film to downplay the fact that Jews were the main victims of Nazi genocide.

Thousands of people disappeared from Paris under Nazi occupation, we are told in one scene—“not only Jews” but also socialists, “homosexuals,” and lots of other categories of people. That’s the only explicit mention of Jews in a film that climaxes with the liberation of Buchenwald and Miller’s photographs of wagonloads of corpses and skeletal figures in striped uniforms.

Oh yes, there’s also the moment where Miller’s photographer buddy David E. Scherman sobs “these are my people”—but we haven’t been told he’s Jewish, so it’s a line that you could easily struggle to understand. The Nazis hated photographers?

This is becoming a pattern, after the biopic of Sir Nicholas Winton, One Life, did something similar. It’s as if for a Holocaust movie to fit with today’s Zeitgeist it has to be inclusive and can’t privilege one group above others as victims of Nazi terror. That Nazis hated everyone equally because they hated diversity and multiculturalism is the underlying message. Except that isn’t true: the Nazis persecuted many groups, but their ideological and practical commitment to eradicating Jews from the face of the earth outweighed all others.


Despite rocket fire, Birthright launches 1st volunteer mission for adults with disabilities
At a farm in central Israel on Monday, a group of American volunteers spread out through the olive groves holding an informal, friendly harvesting competition. Wearing heavy gloves in the late morning heat and carrying thick plastic buckets to collect the spoils, the group moved quickly and soon assembled a sizable haul of hard, green olives.

It was not the usual group of volunteers from abroad: the 12 participants all were on the autistic spectrum or had other non-physical disabilities, in what sponsor Birthright Israel said was the-first-of-its-kind volunteer group to visit Israel during the Israel-Hamas war.

This trip was “different because we’re doing a lot more of my kind of things. I love volunteering,” said participant Maddy Katz, a young woman with glasses who proudly showed the olives she had gathered.

They almost didn’t make it to pick olives at Harvest Helpers, a farm in Rishon Lezion run by food rescue organization Leket Israel, because that morning, due to the escalating situation in Israel’s north, they learned that they would have to relocate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for the last few days of their visit.

Having to quickly pack their things and change the itinerary at the last minute didn’t phase Katz, who said the trip had “a lot of moving parts.” She was looking forward to going home to Columbus, Ohio, where her first priorities would be “sleep, shower and laundry,” and then updating her binder, where she keeps records of her 80,000 hours of volunteering over the last 10 years.

The volunteer group, due to return to the US early Wednesday, was sponsored by Conservative Judaism’s National Ramah Tikvah Network and Birthright Israel’s Onward program. All the volunteers had previously participated in Ramah camps in the US and most had already been in Israel.

According to Birthright Israel, this was the first volunteering trip for disabled adults during the conflict. Since November 2023, Birthright has brought over 7,500 volunteers on similar trips to Israel, they noted, and organized its first “accessible trip” in 2001.

In addition to agricultural work, the group’s 10-day visit included volunteer activities where they helped pack up food and supplies, but they also toured Israel’s Paralympic training facility, spent time in Tel Aviv, visited the Western Wall, and more.
Indigenous Friends of Israel
Indigenous Friends of Israel International is fundraising for an education campaign to combat antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in Australia, with plans to extend it internationally.

The group was founded in 2017 by Indigenous artist and pastor Norman Miller (Munganbana) who is of the Jirrbal, Bar-Barrum and Tableland Yidinji tribes, and his wife Barbara – a non-Indigenous author, sociologist and former psychologist. Both have actively campaigned for Indigenous rights in Australia.

Discussing the group’s importance, Barbara told The AJN, “As Israel is often referred to as a settler colonial racist apartheid state taking land from Indigenous Palestinian people, it is important we have Indigenous people stand up and say that Jewish people are Indigenous to the land of Israel and we support their right to live in their ancestral homeland.”

Barbara rejects the notion that Palestinians are indigenous to the land of Israel. She added, “There has been a concerted effort by the pro-Palestinian movement to coopt the Indigenous Australian cause to the Palestinian cause … They think if they can falsely convince people to believe their propaganda it would bolster their cause.”
Former UN speechwriter pens book on Israel’s global aid work even when ‘desperately poor’
Chassidic and Midrashic literature is full of stories of handsome rewards for the improbable charity of impoverished people. The Jewish state opted to adopt a global philanthropic posture even when it was very poor, and it did so before much wealthier countries and global bodies, according to a new book by Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for the Israeli mission to the United Nations.

“The history of how Israel starts in international development is an amazing, untold story, and that’s the whole reason I decided to write a book,” Klompas told JNS, of her new book Stand-Up Nation: Israeli Resilience in the Wake of Disaster.

“It’s a story of how Israel, as a developing nation when it is desperately poor, decides it’s going to found an international development agency, even before the United States, before Canada, before the United Nations has the U.N Development Programme,” she said.

In the early days of the modern Israeli state, Golda Meir, then the Israeli foreign minister, created MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, in 1958.

“We’ve always decided that we’re not going to be insular. We’re not going to be turtles in a shell. That we’re going to turn outwards and engage in the world,” Klompas told JNS.

Israel dispatched specialists with broad expertise, from agriculture to infrastructure development, overseas, and MASHAV had a swift and major impact. In its first year, the organization welcomed 137 participants to courses in Israel and sent 80 Israeli experts abroad, according to Klompas. From 1958 until 1971, 4,341 experts served in the organization, with 2,763 deployed to Africa, she said.

Although some Israeli diplomats and Knesset members wanted to make Israeli aid overseas dependent on political support, Abba Eban, the Jewish state’s foreign minister from 1966 to 1974, was adamant that the act of giving had intrinsic value and should not be subject to conditions.




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