Tuesday, October 01, 2024

10/01 Links Pt2: BHL: Israel Acts Alone; The choice was between civilisation or barbarism; UN has betrayed its founding principles; The racist protocols of Ta-Nehisi Coates

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Israel Acts Alone
In short, the free world, the real one, the one that stretches from New York, Paris, and Rome to the crowds that, from Tehran to Ankara and from Moscow to Beijing and Kabul, do not resign themselves to living under imbecilic and bloody dictatorships, can breathe a little easier and see the signs of possible change.

Of course, nothing is yet decided.

Hezbollah still has tens of thousands of missiles pointed at Israel.

And history having, as Marx said, to remain in the same metaphorical register, more imagination than man, the “five kings” that are Iran, Russia, the Islamist International, Turkey, and China are not without recourse, far from it.

But the Israelis have delivered a lesson in determination and courage.

They did the opposite to what the European and American Munich Agreement cheerleaders were repeating like broken records: “De-escalate! De-escalate!” After all, according to the theories of just war, and after that, according to Clausewitz, there are situations in the world where, alas, escalation is necessary and the only option.

And the Israelis reminded the world that there are moments in history, when your (Israel’s) survival is at stake, when entire peoples (Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds) are taken hostage and threatened, when the strategy of compromise is taken by the enemy (formerly Nazi Germany, today the Islamic Republic of Iran) as an invitation to hit even harder—moments, then, where one of those strong acts that the cowards call “escalation” can turn the tide, redraw the power map, and save lives.

The IDF acts alone because that is, today, its situation.

But it acts—contrary to what armchair strategists castigating an “Israel now out of control” repeat everywhere—with measure and without hubris.

It breaks the operational capabilities of a state within a state that terrorized the world. And it does this, as always, while trying to do everything it could to spare innocent civilians.

And, as we all now know since the fall of the great empires and, more recently, of the USSR, dictators fear, not just failure, but the external humiliation that leaves them naked before their internal opposition—such that Israel may well be in the process of fulfilling in Iran itself the great dream of Western republics, moderate Arab countries, and, again, heroines of democracy who have courageously paraded for two years now in Tehran to the shouts of “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

For these reasons, Israel’s allies must urgently regroup to support it, not just in defense, but for victory.
Melanie Phillips: The choice was between civilisation or barbarism
For decades, the West said nothing while Hezbollah assembled its 150,000 rockets pointing at Israel from civilian areas of southern Lebanon in flagrant disregard of UN resolution 1701. It said nothing for the past 12 months as Hezbollah bombarded northern Israel with missiles every single day. It said nothing for more than 20 years while Hamas fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza to kill Israeli civilians, forcing them to all but live in bomb shelters and their children to suffer enduring trauma.

But when Israel finally defends itself, the West suddenly finds its voice and tells it that it mustn’t do so.

Why is this? Several reasons. There’s the way left-wingers and Islamists unite in an attempt to wipe Israel off the map. There’s the endemic Jew-hatred, whose latest mutation is the wish to eradicate the collective Jew in Israel. There’s the liberal article of faith that all conflicts can be ended through negotiation and compromise, so the notion that sometimes war may be unavoidable to defeat fanatics with non-negotiable agendas is simply never acceptable. And there’s the destruction of the West’s moral compass under the impact of ideologies aimed at destroying its identity, values and culture.

Now we understand how the Holocaust could have happened. It’s not just that there are people who want to exterminate Jews. They can only do so with the active connivance or indifference of the rest of the world.

October 7 presented the West with a clear choice: civilisation or barbarism. It has not chosen to defend civilisation. But as the West disintegrates under the weight of moral bankruptcy and collapse of self-belief, iron has entered the Israeli soul. Israel made a different choice. It said never again would it allow its people to be invaded, slaughtered, raped, beheaded and burned alive. This would be the last war in which it would have to fight for its existence.

The Israelis are deeply traumatised. Their grief and anxiety are off the scale. At the same time, their spirit is unbroken. Yes, many deeply dislike Benjamin Netanyahu and there are large demonstrations aiming to get him out of office. But Israelis are remarkably united in their determination to inflict total defeat upon the enemies who want them gone.

Yet there’s more. The astonishing, heroic commitment of the young conscripts at the front derives from their belief that they aren’t just fighting for their nation and for those who were slaughtered or kidnapped on October 7, but also for all those Jews who came before them and kept the Jewish people alive despite the centuries of such slaughter.

Israel will win this terrible war – whatever the cost – because it knows what it is, loves its Jewish identity and is proud of it. As a result, it is determined to live. The opposite is true of the West that has abandoned it.
Melanie Phillips: The Hamas Broadcasting Corporation
This is not just a question of the BBC failing to discharge its charter obligation to be fair and balanced, serious as that dereliction of journalistic duty is in itself. The vicious media coverage in the west, produced by Hamas and its fellow travellers in the Palestinian cause and consisting of serial falsehoods, malicious distortions and blood libels designed to demonise, delegitimise and destroy Israel, is an absolutely essential weapon in the Hamas armoury.

Through the totally false narrative of Israeli interlopers in “Palestine” who first drove out the “indigenous Palestinians” and are now illegally and oppressively occupying their land — every part of which is untrue — the western public was softened up during many decades for the big lie that’s been pumped out for the past year that the IDF has been wantonly killing and starving civilians in Gaza.

That is the very opposite of the truth. This lie has helped incite hysteria and violent hatred against both Israel and diaspora Jews, and ramped up pressure on western governments to dump on Israel while giving Hamas an easy ride. And while much of the media has been complicit in this — Sky News has been particularly disgusting — the most influential and powerful media outlet that has led the pack in this incitement has been the BBC. whose coverage of this terrible war has been, in general, utterly monstrous.

As Cohen and Deech write:
Military analysts and experts across the world will tell you that Hamas cannot win the war it started with Israel by force of arms alone. Anti-Israel propaganda isn’t merely a tactic for Hamas; it is integral to its war effort. Indeed, it is a war aim in and of itself. Hamas must convince the world, through media outlets like the BBC, that Israel is brutal, indiscriminate, and unjust; that the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians are something that Israel wantonly pursues, rather than a tragic consequence of Hamas turning the Palestinian people into human shields.

Hamas has embedded its terrorist infrastructure amongst civilians, including in former school buildings (often mistakenly described as working schools in news reports), hospitals and mosques. With an iniquitous disregard for the truth, Hamas even lays the false charge of ‘genocide’ against Israel in responding to the attack on 7 October - the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust and an indisputably genocidal act.

Through these tactics, they seek to claim that Israel is actually fighting a war of aggression, rather than taking necessary defensive action in an existential fight against Iran and its proxies.

As this report comprehensively demonstrates, the BBC all too often accepts Hamas’s distortions as fair framing or fact. Worse than that, it then sells them on to a credulous world as news burnished by the BBC’s authority and reputation.

Among the examples the report lists:
On the day of the October 7 pogrom itself, while the rest of Britain’s media were detailing the brutality of Hamas’s attack on Israel and before Israel went to war in Gaza, the BBC led its coverage with a headline about “Israeli revenge attacks”.
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 pogrom, it broadcast interviews with Hamas apologists who used this platform to make comments which the BBC was forced to admit were “offensive”.
It reported that an “Israeli strike” killed “hundreds” at the Al Ahli hospital: thereby repeating, legitimising and reinforcing entirely false claims that directly caused unrest in some European and Middle Eastern countries, including serious arson attacks upon synagogues in Germany and Tunisia.
It failed to remove articles suggesting the same hospital blast may have been caused by the Israeli military, even after the BBC admitted it got its reporting wrong.
It reported that Israeli soldiers had been “targeting” medical teams and Arab speakers as they hunted Hamas terrorists in a hospital, when instead they actually had brought medical teams and Arab speakers with them to help the patients during the military operation.
It published an article that wrongly claimed a UN report had warned “half of Gaza’s population is starving” and peddled a false Hamas propaganda line that Gaza had become a “polio epidemic zone”.
At the height of the conflict, BBC Arabic was forced to correct articles on average every 48 hours, including copy that referred to Hamas as the “resistance”.
BBC Arabic platformed one guest who had previously referred to the October 7 massacre as a “heroic military miracle” and another who described Hamas atrocities against innocent Israelis as “necessary”.
It failed to remove graphs from its website that purported to show that 70 per cent of Gazan fatalities were women and children – after those figures were shown to be inaccurate.
It routinely quoted figures produced by the Hamas Health Ministry without highlighting it as a terrorist-run organisation, and routinely failed to stress in reporting that Hamas fatality figures are unverifiable and include thousands of Hamas terrorists.
It repeatedly reported Israeli strikes on Hamas command centres based inside school buildings as “strikes on schools” and repeatedly failed to explain the terror group’s use of innocent Palestinians as human shields.
It used freelance journalists and eyewitness reports without due diligence on their social media accounts which would have revealed clear anti-Israel bias.
A senior BBC executive admitted inaccuracies had “real world consequences” for British Jews but were inevitable because of the “fog of war”.


Arsen Ostrovsky: Israel’s elimination of Nasrallah was just and legal under laws of war
Yet before Nasrallah has even been buried and IDF forces set foot in Lebanon, there has been no shortage of self-proclaimed experts and apologists for terror erroneously charging Israel with violating international law.

But the law here is clear.

The Law of Armed Conflict, also known as International Humanitarian Law (IHL), is based on three foundational principles which also conform with the guiding U.S. Department of Defense Laws of War Manual and include: military necessity, distinction, and proportionality.

The principle of necessity requires that a party to an armed conflict may only resort to those measures that are necessary to achieve the legitimate purpose of a conflict, and specifically, to weaken the military capacity of the other parties.

In this case, Israel’s attack on Hezbollah’s headquarters where Nasrallah was hiding, and entry of IDF troops into southern Lebanon, was designed to specifically weaken and disrupt the terror group’s ability to continue firing rockets at Israel, thereby clearly meeting the necessary threshold.

The principle of distinction requires that parties to a conflict must “at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives.”

Yet, whereas Hezbollah has indiscriminately rained rockets down on civilian areas in Israel for the past year, Israeli actions, such as those taken this past weekend, have been aimed solely at Hezbollah targets including their senior leadership, command centre, and rocket launching infrastructure, which clearly fall within the legitimate scope of ‘military objectives’.

And lastly, there is perhaps no principle in international law that has been as repeatedly abused as that of “proportionality,” to reflexively castigate Israel and charge it with war crimes every time the pesky Jewish state refuses to surrender and allow its citizens to be slaughtered.

But what is a “proportionate” response to 10,000 rockets being rained down on you? Should Israel have indiscriminately fired 10,000 rockets on central Beirut? Of course not.

First, we need to throw away the notion that proportionality is measured by some kind of perverse equivalence in civilian deaths. It is not. Under IHL, the doctrine of proportionality requires that any expected loss of civilian life must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from such an attack.

In relation to Israel’s current military operation, the goal vis-à-vis Hezbollah was clear: to stop their rocket fire, force Hezbollah to withdraw from southern Lebanon and allow Israeli citizens in the north to safely return home, essentially in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

And whilst Israel has, yet again, gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid harm to civilians in Lebanon, while abiding by the principles of distinction and necessity, it is Hezbollah, which just like Hamas, is also committing the double war crime or embedding in civilian areas, cynically using the Lebanese people as human shields, while indiscriminately firing at civilians in Israel. Indeed, Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker and Hezbollah central command was embedded underneath residential buildings in Beirut.

In short, Israel’s operation to eliminate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and enter into southern Lebanon has been a textbook display of military precision and self-defensive action, in accordance with international humanitarian law.

However, for some critics, it will just never be enough. There are many who claim Israel has the right to self-defense, but yet the moment the Jewish state lawfully exercises that right against someone like Hassan Nasrallah, a man who is the very embodiment of evil, they immediately object to it. Perhaps their issue is not Israel’s right to self-defense, but its very existence.
Natasha Hausdorff: The United Nations has betrayed its founding principles
This week the UN General Assembly met in New York. Born out of the Second World War, and the determination to prevent another all-consuming catastrophe, for almost 80 years the UN has carried the hopes of the world.

With its avowed good intentions for the 193 member states, to the ordinary man in the street it enjoys a virtuous cachet reserved in earlier generations only for saints.

Sadly, the reality is a deeply corrupt and irrevocably flawed organisation, defined at every turn by the lowest moral common denominator, thanks to the very worst of those member states being given a platform and authority.

Far from preventing war, the United Nations has become an enabler of conflict that empowers autocracies and allows its various subsidiary bodies to foment hate. Nothing embodies this failure more than the long sorry saga of the UN and Israel.

It is almost impossible to comprehend the perversity of the General Assembly’s repeated attempt to deny the right of the state of Israel to exist, in the 80 years since the holocaust.

In 2001, the World Conference Against Racism was held under UN auspices in Durban, South Africa.

It quickly descended into nothing more than a thinly veiled hate-fest, with delegates banding together to brand Israel a “racist apartheid state” that committed “war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing”.

Outside the conference, copies of the notorious antisemitic screed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were distributed. Placards read: “If only Hitler had won.” Thus was proclaimed the utter moral turpitude of an organisation founded in the ashes of the war that vanquished the Nazis.

The decades since have confirmed this hatred of Israel has become institutionally systemic – not a bug but a feature of the UN.


Israel should hit Iran where it hurts
In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometres off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometres from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeidah in Yemen — a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again yesterday.

Iran has made great efforts to reduce its dependence on the Khark terminal. That’s not because it is too close to Israel, but rather because it was too close to Iraq, and was indeed attacked and burned during the Iran-Iraq war. The result it Iran’s newly opened Jask oil terminal. Out on the shores of the Indian Ocean, it’s much futher from Israel than Khark. But for the IDF’s air planners, that’s scarcely a problem: the oil reaches Jask by a very long pipeline that can be disrupted at points even closer to Israel than Khark Island.

Given that Israel could easily cut off Iranian funding for Hezbollah and its other enemies by doing so, why has it refrained from targeting the country’s oil exports? In one phrase: “Obama’s Law”. Tacitly but very forcefully promulgated by the former president, it banned any Israeli or US attacks against Iran, even as the Islamic Republic has continued to kill US soldiers in Iraq and Yemen, and has kept attacking Israel through its proxies. On 13 April, Iran even attacked Israel directly. Stemming from Obama’s great fear that he would be manipulated into going to war against Iran, just as his predecessor was talked into war with Iraq, the then president’s all-out pursuit of a historic reconciliation with Iran utterly ignored the simple fact that the Islamic Republic’s fanatical rulers could not possibly be reconciled with the West. With Obama’s people also staffing Biden’s White House, the US has persisted with this policy of one-sided restraint, which it also imposed on Israel. That’s even as the Ayatollah’s regime has continued to forcibly suppress a pro-Western opposition that hates its corrupt and wasteful rule with a passion. Nor did US policy change when Iran continued to target US allies in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

In the event of a Harris victory this November, the Obama crowd would continue to staff the White House. That leaves a narrow window for Israeli action against Iran. To be sure, attacking a vast country of 91 million people would be a reckless act for Israel under any circumstances. But to stop Iran’s oil revenues — whose benefits are denied to its long-suffering population by an oppressive regime that most Iranians bitterly oppose — is quite another matter. Given, moreover, that hyperinflation has brought outright hunger to Iran’s urban population for the first time since the fall of the Shah in 1979, an attack on the country’s oil exports could even trigger the downfall of the regime. There are, of course, very many variables between any Israeli action and such a happy consequence. But if destroying Iran’s oil revenue did finally bring about the end of the Ayatollah regime, it’s not just Netanyahu who would celebrate.
On same day Iran fires 200 ballistic missiles at Jewish state, US sanctions Israelis
On the same day that Iran fired some 200 ballistic missiles at the Jewish state and two Palestinian terrorists killed seven people in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions against two Israelis in Judea and Samaria whom Foggy Bottom accused of “undermining peace, security and stability In the West Bank.”

The State Department said that the two are “a violent Israeli settler and the CEO and director of U.S.-designated Hashomer Yosh.”

“The actions of these individuals have contributed to creating an environment where violence and instability thrive,” Foggy Bottom stated. “Their actions, collectively and individually, undermine peace, security and stability in the West Bank.” (The Biden administration refers to part of Judea and Samaria as the “West Bank.”)

Hashomer Yosh, a nonprofit, has said that it does not engage in violence and U.S. sanctions are based on false information.

The U.S. Treasury Department identified the two Israelis as Eitan Yardeni and Avichai Suissa. It also designated Hilltop Youth, which the State Department said is “a violent extremist group that has rampaged through Palestinian communities in the West Bank.”

“It has carried out killings, mass arson and other so-called ‘price tag’ attacks to exact revenge and intimidate Palestinian civilians,” the State Department said. “Hilltop Youth has repeatedly clashed with the Israeli military when it tries to counter Hilltop Youth’s destructive activities.”


Avigayil and Ariel top names for Israeli Jewish babies in 5784
Avigayil and Ariel were the most popular names given to Israeli Jewish girls and boys, born in the Hebrew year 5784, the Population and Immigration Authority said on Monday, ahead of Rosh Hashanah.

The top three names for Jewish girls born across the Jewish state over the past year were Avigayil, followed by Tamar and Yael, the government agency said, echoing the statistics of the Hebrew year 5783 (2022-2023).

For Jewish baby boys, Ariel, David and Lavi were the most popular names. Last year, David headed the list, followed by Ariel and Lavi.

The most prevalent name for Israeli babies remained Muhammad, with 1,846 newborns being given the name of the founder of Islam over the past 12 months, compared to some 1,000 Jewish Ariels.

Israel’s population is expected to surpass 10 million in the coming weeks, according to data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

As 5784 draws to a close, some 7.689 million (78.6%) Israelis identify as Jewish and 2.095 million (21.4%) as Arab. Approximately 183,000 babies were born in the Jewish state over the past 12 months.

The two-day Rosh Hashanah holiday begins at sundown on Wednesday, Oct. 2, ushering in the new Hebrew year of 5785 (2024-2025).

Following the Oct. 7 massacre, Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority witnessed a rise in popularity of the names Be’eri, Oz, Erez, Nova and Nir, alluding to places that were attacked by Hamas terrorists.
‘Pogrom(s)’ stands out in a flurry of Oct. 7 documentaries
Oct. 7 is still happening, it’s not even over yet, and already we are inundated by films, plays, songs, artwork, pop-up museums, gatherings and memorial-service concerts. Thus far, at least nine documentaries about Oct. 7 have been, or are about to be, released.

Tech entrepreneur and author Sheryl Sandberg released a quietly haunting interview-based documentary Screams Before Silence in late April. It is available on YouTube. Yariv Mozer’s We Will Dance Again: Surviving October 7th was released on Sept. 26 and posted on BBC Two and iPlayer. Dani Rosenberg’s Of Dogs and Men, premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year and will be distributed by Rai Cinema. (I have not seen either Mozer’s or Rosenberg’s films).

Finally, Pierre Rehov’s Pogrom(s): Could America Be Next? will appear on Oct. 7, on major platforms such as Apple TV, Google Plus, Amazon Prime and Tubi TV.

Rehov’s Pogrom(s), is something of a masterpiece. The footage is extraordinary, as is the music and cinematography. The interviews are poignant, such as the one with Yossi Landau of Zaka, with expert insights from people like Mordechai Kedar (an expert on Islamist groups), Nitsana Darshan Leitner (president of Sherut HaDin), Michael Milstein (head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University) and others.

Rehov also includes an on-camera interview with Yuval Bitton, the former head of intelligence for the Israeli Prison Service. Bitton got to know Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar very well when he was incarcerated and helped save Sinwar’s life. To our credit but also our detriment, this is what Jews do. We save lives.

Rehov’s footage confirms how well Palestinian terrorists, even those with blood on their hands, are treated in Israeli jails. They are well-fed, decently housed, allowed to join each other for prayer five times a day, allowed to have visitors and mail, and are given medical and dental care. This footage makes me a little crazy as I think about how Hamas treats its prisoners, aka our precious hostages.

Pogrom(s) captures the historical hatred and violence against Jews by pagans, Christians and Muslims, which places Oct. 7 in “context.” He reminds us that Muslims were the first to order Jews to wear a yellow patch, and many centuries later, the Nazis followed suit. In the film’s vast sweep of history, Rehov also includes the Turkish Muslim genocide of the Armenians (something that the Turks still refuse to acknowledge); the collaboration of Arabs with Nazis during the Shoah; and the well-funded disinformation campaign about this very history in secular Western universities and in mosques, churches and even in certain synagogues and Jewish organizations for Palestine.
Israel is not a Post-Heroic Society
Books under Review
The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza, Seth J. Frantzman
The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands, Amir Tibon
One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories, compiled by Yair Agmon and Oriya Mevorach

‘Ours is not a bloodline but a textline,’ Amos Oz and his daughter Fania Oz Salzberger tell us in their wonderful book, Jews and Words. So we should not be overly surprised that as the anniversary of the Hamas massacre on 7 October draws close, hundreds of thousands of words have been written to mark the event – 80 Hebrew books published in Israel so far –and help us better understand that day.

In different ways, One Day in October by Yair Agmon and Oriya Mevorach, The October 7 War, by Seth Frantzman, and The Gates of Gaza by Amir Tibon do just that. Israel’s mistaken ‘conception’

A journalist who has spent time living in and travelling the region writing on military tactics and strategy, Frantzman does a good job at mapping out the conception that led to the IDF’s failure to prepare for the Hamas attack. He notes the building of the concrete underground barrier, which Israel came to over-rely on, which was ‘designed to deal with the 2014 threat’ (namely Hamas’ offensive tunnels that entered Israeli territory). That was a blunder, according to Yossi Langotsky, an Israeli geologist and colonel in the reserves who consulted on how to handle the tunnel threat, ‘along the lines of the Maginot line’. ‘The smartest thing was to harness geophysics to the fight against tunnels to place sensors and detectors in the ground, which would warn of movements related to the ground’ Langotsky says. ‘But this is not the ultimate solution, because there is no one ultimate solution.’

The Netanyahu-led government and the security establishment believed Hamas to be uninterested in war. Frantzman writes of how in September 2023, Israeli security officials travelled to Doha in Qatar to discuss more funding to Gaza and allowing more daily labourers from the Strip into Israel. Israel’s assessment was that Hamas was deterred and any escalation in rhetoric or threats was actually for money and work. ‘Hamas had been defeated in 2002, 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, and it would be defeated again. Also, Hamas had not changed. It didn’t have new weapons.’

Frantzman also describes the problems on the day itself. The gaps in how the IDF warnings were communicated to the top brass. How Hamas’s attack on the army base at Reim blinded the IDF to the extent of the attack. In Kibbutz Be’eri, Arik Kraunik, who had the keys to the armory where the security team could access rifles and armored vests, was killed in the initial attack before he could distribute the gear and weapons. This left the rest of the dozen members of the team unable to obtain more rifles to defend the community. ‘The security team kept fighting, but they had one rifle, which passed from one wounded man to another as members of the team became incapacitated,’ Frantzman explains.

The challenge is how one can effectively analyse a war that is ongoing and whose end is uncertain. And for some readers, the various units and places may become hard to follow – the book is filled with details about Shayetet 13, Duvdevan, Yahalom commandos, Yasam police commandos, Shaldag, Sayeret Matkal and others. (Those who enjoy learning about the differences between the seventy-ton tracked Namer APC, which uses a Merkava tank chassis, and the Eitan APC which was the ideal replacement for the M113 armored personnel carrier are in for a treat.) But those looking for details about the years preceding the attack, the day itself and the last 12 months of military operations will undoubtedly learn a great deal.


A year after Oct. 7, UN head censures Hamas for not letting Red Cross see hostages
While the United Nations has called for the return of the hostages in the past, its secretary-general, António Guterres, finally condemned Hamas for not allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit the hostages in Gaza.

It represents the first time that he’s publicly condemned the terrorist organization for not allowing the Red Cross to see the hostages. It has been almost a year since Oct. 7.

“I’d like to condemn the fact that the Red Cross is not even allowed to visit those hostages,” he said. “This is something clear in international humanitarian law.”

Guterres also reiterated his call for the immediate release of the remaining 101 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.

He somewhat condemned the rocket barrage attack against Israel on Tuesday, in which as many as 200 rockets were fired at the Jewish state, forcing Israelis throughout the country to shelter. However, he didn’t call out Iran by name or even specifically mention the rocket attacks.

In a post on X, Guterres wrote: “I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire.”


“Israelophobia Is OUT Of Control” | New Book Reveals How West ‘Failed’ Moral Test After Oct 7
‘After The Pogrom’ reveals how the West ‘Failed’ the morality test after the October 7 attack in Israel by Hamas.

The new book, authored by Brendon O’Neill of Spiked Online, revisits the events of October 7, 2024, and the global backlash against Israel following the incursion and alleged support for Hamas.

“People took to the streets to celebrate the pogrom,” Brendon tells Talk’s Julia Hartley-Brewer.


Israel: The racist protocols of Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates begins the Israeli-Palestinian section of his new book, The Message, with a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The excursion, taken on the last day of his 10-day junket to the Palestine Festival of Literature, isn’t meant to elicit sympathy for the Jewish people or offer context about the founding of Israel. Rather, it is a literary device used to accuse the Israelis of becoming the thing they most revile. You see the irony, of course. It’s like unfurling one of those Israeli flags with a swastika painted on it — but in swirling prose.

Indeed, The Message may well be the most beautifully crafted blood libel ever published. Each turn of phrase oozes with a loathing of the Jewish state. As with his previous work, history is a poetic truth in which white people are innately and inexorably evil — the Jew perhaps most of all.

Coates, in fact, severs the Holocaust from Jewish history, as if this is within his power, noting that he sees “Yad Vashem at a distance from Israel itself” because of “echoes to white supremacy, colonial roots, its apartheid policies.” Even a casual student of history knows this rendering of Zionism is absurdly juvenile. But it is his telling of the Palestinian plight that is criminally misleading.

The Palestinians of The Message are uncannily peaceful, yearning to write poetry and plow the “sacred land” beneath their feet. Nowhere in his book, not once, does Coates bother mentioning “Hamas” despite writing it right after one of the largest massacres of Jews in history. Nowhere in his polemic about the Palestinian struggle does Coates type the words “Palestinian Liberation Organization” or “PLO” or “Fatah,” much less “Hezbollah” or “Iran.” “Yasser Arafat” wasn’t important enough to make an appearance.

Because Coates distances himself from the Holocaust, his readers will be blissfully unaware of the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, who personally implored Adolf Hitler to “burn” the Jews of Europe years before Israel ever existed. It would, no doubt, be a heavy lift for Coates to explain why Arab pogroms occurred with regularity before the “occupied territories” or “Nakba.”

The word “terrorist” makes one appearance in the entirety of The Message, and it is preceded by the word “Zionist.” Coates spends his time lamenting the myths of 1948. Though Coates is unconcerned about the thousands of Palestinian murders of Jews, we learn about the fanatic Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994. The Goldstein story is unintentionally useful. Anyone with a functioning moral compass immediately recognizes that Goldstein isn’t a martyr of Israel, his actions denounced by virtually every Jewish organization in the world. To this day, on the other hand, the Palestinian Authority allocates monthly stipends to the families of hundreds of Baruch Goldsteins, reportedly to the tune of hundreds of millions.


Daniel Greenfield: Biden: No Money for Flood Victims, $336M for ‘Palestinians’
Plenty of people have seen the short clip of Biden replying that there’s no more money left for Hurricane Helene victims.
BIDEN: “We’ve given everything that we have.”
“Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them?”
BIDEN: “No.”

But there’s always more money for Hamas and the PLO who are occupying parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

After just wasting over $200 million on a failed Gaza aid pier, the Biden-Harris admin is dispatching over $300 million more in “humanitarian aid” to prop up Islamic terrorists.

The real devil however is in the details.
Today’s funding brings the total U.S. humanitarian assistance announced for the Palestinian people to more than $1 billion since October 2023.

Kill over 1,000 people, get over $1 billion. What Islamic terror group wouldn’t take that deal?

There’s always money for Islamic migrants and terrorists, but there’s never enough money for Americans.


House lawmakers maintain support for restoring UNRWA funding despite new Hamas revelations
House Democrats leading a bill seeking to restore U.S. funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said the revelation on Monday that Hamas’ commander in Lebanon was an UNRWA teacher hasn’t changed their thinking on restoring funding.

A group of more than 60 House Democrats recently introduced a bill to restore funding to the scandal-plagued U.N. agency. Republicans have largely sought to permanently cut off funding and have vowed not to approve any further aid to the agency.

The UNRWA employee in question, Fatah Sharif, had, according to the agency, been placed on leave as the agency investigated his “political activities,” though the UNRWA head said he was unaware of Sharif’s seniority in Hamas. Hamas described Sharif as a school principal.

Sharif has been the subject of scrutiny from the nonprofit U.N. Watch, which described him as the leader of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon and highlighted his Hamas ties months ago. Sharif was killed in an Israeli airstrike this week.

Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN), one of the lead sponsors of the UNRWA funding bill in the House, said in a statement to Jewish Insider that Sharif was not reflective of UNRWA as a whole.

“The UN has completed an exhaustive investigation and UNRWA has taken additional steps towards complete accountability and reform,” Carson said. “These allegations against a former employee are concerning but are not reflective of the entire organization, and UNRWA has demonstrated its ability to address incidents swiftly and decisively. We should not allow allegations against a few individuals to impact the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Palestinians who rely on UNRWA’s operation to survive.”

He added that “even if the fighting ends today, the humanitarian damage will take a very long time to repair. UNRWA needs the support of people of good will and peace, in the US and among all UN members.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), another lead sponsor of the bill, likewise said UNRWA had responded appropriately to concerns about Shariff.

“UNRWA employs over 30,000 people across the region and has, for decades, served as a lifeline for Palestinians by providing food, shelter, clean water, health care, education, and livelihoods,” Schakowsky said in a statement to JI, describing the agency as the “backbone” of the response in Gaza.

“UNRWA and the United Nations took swift and decisive actions to address the concerns raised by the U.S. government when it paused funding in January, and immediately opened an investigation and suspended Fateh al-Sharif without pay when it received reports of his allegiances,” she continued. “Ending the vital and lifesaving work that UNRWA does as chief distributor of aid to Palestinians is untenable and would create an even more catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
UNRWA can’t fully vet staff for Hamas ties, because it lacks police, intelligence unit, United Nations says
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency didn’t realize earlier that the principal of one of its schools, who was also head of a teacher’s union, doubled as a Hamas terror commander in Lebanon, because the United Nations agency “doesn’t have an intelligence or police unit to investigate every staff member,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, told JNS on Monday.

Shortly after Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on Sunday, Hamas identified him as its commander in Lebanon and paid tribute to him.

“Fateh Sherif was indeed an UNRWA employee. As soon as UNRWA received information about his possible involvement with Hamas at a senior level, he was immediately put on administrative leave without pay. This was back in March,” Dujarric said in response to a question from JNS at a press briefing. “Contrary to what information may be floating in social media or other places, he was never ever reinstated.”

In March, U.N. Watch notified the global body of the terror ties of Sherif, the principal of the UNRWA-run Deir Yassin Secondary School in al-Bass and head of the UNRWA teacher’s union, which oversees 39,000 students in 65 schools.

His suspension drew widespread protests and strikes from Lebanese teachers, and reports indicated that Sherif’s suspension had been lifted as a result, although Dujarric denied that charge.

Dujarric said that UNRWA has “taken on board” a number of recommendations made in an independent report early this year, compiled to address issues in its neutrality and vetting processes.

Many critics saw that reporting effort, led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, as an attempt to absolve UNRWA of accountability for long-standing problems, with only cosmetic recommended changes.

Dujarric said that UNRWA, which “like most employers, doesn’t have an intelligence or police unit to investigate every staff member,” has acted swiftly when it has been aware of a problem.

“Every time UNRWA has received information beyond just a name, action has been taken, and we’ll continue to do so,” he said. “Anyone who works for the U.N. and engages in terror-like activity is unacceptable and outrageous and an insult to all U.N. staff members around the world.”
We know the UN is immoral. This guy rubs it in their face: Full Comment podcast
You’d have to be a fool not to see how the UN has been taken over by malevolent dictatorships. But rather than give up on the ideals the United Nations was founded upon, Hillel Neuer forces the world body to face its hypocrisy, antisemitism and despot-worship. The Montreal-born executive director of UN Watch joins Brian Lilley this week to talk about his work in Geneva, where he tirelessly torments corrupt UN bodies and delegates by revealing their complicity with the worst human-rights abusers and terrorists, while persecuting liberal democracies — especially Israel. Neuer discusses the many ways that Iran, China, North Korea and Russia pervert the UN’s noble ambitions and what can be done to make it live up to its lofty aspirations. (Recorded Sept. 25, 2024.)


Meet Australia’s pro-Hezbollah protesters
The usual anti-Semitism was on full display at the protests, too. One man, who tried to video a group of men waving Hezbollah flags in Sydney, was reportedly called a ‘fucking Zionist faggot’. According to the Age newspaper, a group of men at the Melbourne protest chanted a classic anti-Semitic slogan in Arabic: ‘Oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.’ This is not the first time this murderous call has been heard on the streets of Melbourne. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to hear this at an event where a sizable chunk of attendees appeared to be grieving the death of a man who led an Islamist militia committed to the destruction of the Jewish State.

Australia’s major political parties were at least united in their condemnation of the rallies. But their responses also struck a bum note. Victoria’s Labor premier, Jacinta Allan, called for police to charge anyone seen waving a Hezbollah flag. Federal opposition leader Peter Dutton called for protesters to be deported, and for stronger laws against the public support of terror leaders (even though the law already criminalises the display of symbols related to terror groups). The fact that there are people living in Australia publicly giving succour to an anti-Semitic terror group like Hezbollah is certainly alarming. But censoring such views, as abhorrent as they may be, doesn’t actually confront the underlying problem. It only pushes this bigotry underground – out of sight, out of mind, allowing it to fester unchallenged.

There has also been a lot of confected shock from politicians in response to this weekend’s rallies. In truth, no one who has followed the anti-Israel protest movement should have been surprised that it contains its fair share of Islamists and anti-Semites. After all, ‘Gas the Jews’ was chanted outside the Sydney Opera House just days after 7 October. Protest organisers have repeatedly failed to condemn Hamas. Jewish students and Israeli academics have been harassed with relative impunity at one of Australia’s most prestigious universities. ‘Pro-Palestine’ protesters were charged for allegedly defacing the office of Jewish, pro-Israel Labor MP Josh Burns back in June. Vandals are accused of lighting fires and spray-painting red horns on an image of Burns’s face – aping Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as the devil. The constituency office of Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, has been graffitied with the red triangle of Hamas.


Judicial inquiry into campus hate rejected
The Senate Committee considering legislation to establish a judicial enquiry into antisemitism at universities has recommended rejecting the Bill, and instead suggested an inquiry be undertaken by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

In its report handed down on Tuesday afternoon, the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee said it was “deeply troubled” by the experiences of Jewish students and staff on campus and that “university responses to incidents of antisemitism, and the fears of Jewish students and staff, have been woefully inadequate”.

“Clearly, further action is required to address the current tensions on university campuses and protect the safety of students and staff,” the Committee’s report said.

“However, the committee does not consider this Bill the most appropriate mechanism for doing so. The committee is concerned that a commission of inquiry would be too slow.”

Instead, noting that “it is entirely within the power of Australian universities to take action to address antisemitism now”, it called on all Australian universities to “urgently review their complaints processes and give effect to any and all changes necessary to ensure these processes are known to and understood by students and staff, and deliver real and meaningful outcomes for complainants”.

It further recommended “the Attorney-General immediately refers an inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights”.

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) said the organisation stood ready to work with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights “to ensure Jewish students’ voices are heard and amplified”.

“The damning evidence that came out of this inquiry highlighted that Jewish students need tangible action now,” it said in a media release.

“While we support a Judicial Inquiry into antisemitism on campus, we hope a parliamentary inquiry will bring much-needed accountability for what Jewish students have endured. We need a truth-telling process that reveals the prevalence of antisemitism and highlights the deficiencies in university responses.

“A parliamentary inquiry cannot be used as a mechanism to delay and distract from the urgent action needed to address antisemitism on campus. It must lead to lasting reform.”


Do lefties realise what Hezbollah and Hamas would do to people like them if THEY governed Australia? PETER VAN ONSELEN dives deep
Either way, the offensive natures of those banners - and they certainly were offensive - pales into insignificance alongside advocacy signs now calling for martyrdom on behalf of an officially listed terrorist organisation.

And some federal parliamentarians have even attended these weekend rallies and others like them in recent months, presumably as a show of support.

On the weekend the Deputy Leader of the Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, was in attendance in Sydney according to reports yesterday.

Where is the outrage on social media that still permeates today when it comes to Abbott's far lesser of evil actions more than a decade ago for what we are now witnessing?

The hypocrisy is off the charts.

Labor's political timidity dealing with the growing public advocacy for violent terror organisations is no doubt because it doesn't want to face a backlash in Muslim communities in outer metropolitan electorates ahead of a tight election campaign.

As sickening as that rationale is, the Greens are also looking to tap into pro-Palestine advocacy in inner city areas of Sydney and Melbourne.

We've already seen how anti-Semitic (and out of control) such protests can get on university campuses.

You wonder if some of the more radical cause advocates on the Left - who wheel out supporters on a variety of issues designed to 'smash capitalism' - ever stop to consider how they would go living under the terrorist regimes that have been in charge in parts of Palestine.

In short they probably wouldn't live under them for very long, because most left wing values on everything from sexuality, to drug liberalisation, to many other freedoms of expression are anathema with how, for example, Hamas governs Gaza.

And that is just for starters.

But from the luxury of enjoying the protections in this country, these perennial opponents of the western values they benefit from choose to side with the sort of organisations that would strip away their rights.

Politicians need to rise above such stupidity and look after the national interest. In the case of the Labor government, that means doing much more than it is now.
Peter Dutton left stunned by ABC reporter's ridiculous question during press conference - before saying what many think about our national broadcaster
Peter Dutton was left stunned by an ABC reporter question asking why Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist organisation.

The Opposition leader has called for snap arrests of protesters who wave Hezbollah flags or parade photos of the terrorist group's slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, as happened at pro-Palestine rallies in Sydney and Melbourne over the weekend.

He has even demanded parliament be recalled to urgently pass legislation that would ban shows of support for terrorist organisations if current laws did not allow for arrests.

Speaking to the media in Sydney on Tuesday, Mr Dutton was asked by an ABC reporter why Hezbollah flags should be banned if Israel flags were not.

'Israel is a democracy,' he replied.

'It's not run by a terrorist organisation. Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation.

'They're a listed terrorist organisation, and if people are in favour of a terrorist organisation, they should declare it and authorities should deal with it.'

The reporter then questioned why the Australian government lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Taken aback, Mr Dutton highlighted that question was 'from the ABC, just to be very clear'.

After a brief back-and-forth, the reporter asked: 'If you could just explain what determines something as a terrorist organisation.'

Dutton fired back, accusing the ABC of being 'in greater trouble than he imagined'.




Hamas recruitment college raked in $2 million from US taxpayers: ‘Greenhouse for martyrs’
A Palestinian university that Hamas once described as a “greenhouse for martyrs” has received roughly $2.2 million in taxpayer-backed handouts from the U.S. government over the last decade, records show.

Between 2009 and 2023, taxpayers in the United States footed the bill for more than a dozen grants to the West Bank-based An-Najah National University, according to federal funding documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The college reportedly serves as a recruitment hub of students into terrorist factions, including Hamas, the student wing of which secured the majority of seats on An-Najah’s council last year.

The awards to An-Najah, which have come almost entirely from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, are a window into how the U.S. has long implemented taxpayer-backed programs overseas that boost terrorism-linked entities. To many members of Congress and national security experts, it is high time for government officials to reassess the federal handout system to ensure the U.S. is not bankrolling violent groups targeting Israel and other U.S. allies.

“Not a single taxpayer dime should go to any university or organization that supports terrorism, and it’s no secret An-Najah National University has a reputation for developing members of Hamas and other terrorist groups,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told the Washington Examiner — adding the U.S. “must take action immediately to halt all funding to An-Najah National University” and other schools affiliated with Hamas.

‘Greenhouse for martyrs’
Chartered in 1977, An-Najah is located in the West Bank’s Nablus, a city approximately 30 miles north of Jerusalem. Months before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel, Hamas’s student wing at the university won the student council elections, according to multiple reports.

The student council “is known for its advocacy of anti-Israel violence and its recruitment of Palestinian college students into terrorist groups,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. Hamas officials have described An-Najah as a “greenhouse for martyrs.”

Earlier this year, Israeli security forces arrested nine Hamas-affiliated students in a raid at An-Najah over their alleged plans to carry out terrorist attacks, the Times of Israel reported.

And in 2011, Israeli forces arrested 11 students at An-Najah for the “transfer of funds and organizing rallies in support of Hamas, in addition to incitement campaigns under the supervision and direction of senior Hamas officials,” according to an Israeli military-led investigation reported by the Jerusalem Post.

“Some of the most notorious Hamas terrorists have held senior positions in the An-Najah faction, including Qais Adwan, a former Islamic Bloc leader and head of the An-Najah student council, who was also the head of the Qassam Brigades in the northern West Bank,” according to a 2007 report by Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute think tank.
Virginia Teacher Who Makes Kids Criticize Israel Is Daughter Of Imam At Al Qaeda-Linked Mosque
An Arlington, Virginia public school teacher who made students criticize Israel is the daughter of an imam who served at a mosque where 9/11 hijackers worshipped.

Shayma Al-Hanooti, who teaches English at Washington-Liberty High School, is the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad Al-Hanooti. From 1995 to 1999, Sheikh Mohammad Al-Hanooti served as imam at Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church. The mosque has ties to a number of al Qaeda terrorists, including two of the 9/11 hijackers and Anwar al-Awlaki.

Documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and shared with The Daily Wire reveal that the younger Al-Hanooti frequently brings her political views to school, drilling students on anti-Israel talking points and sparring with colleagues about the conflict in Gaza. Al-Hanooti, who has donated to Hamas-linked organizations, implied to students that Israel was committing genocide, sparred with superiors who prevented students from chanting anti-Semitic slogans, and dismissed colleagues who objected to her political statements.

Such political positions are commonplace in the Al-Hanooti family. According to the Center for Security Policy, Al-Hanooti’s father was an “un-indicted co-conspirator” in both the 2008 Holy Land Foundation Hamas Financing Trial and the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing plot. He was a member of the Palestine Committee of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, which was established in order to support Hamas.” The elder Al-Hanooti also allegedly raised $6 million for Hamas, according to an FBI memo. Al-Hanooti’s brother, Muthanna, was sentenced to federal prison after being charged with secretly helping Saddam Hussein’s regime, and this year called Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar “sell-outs” after they condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack.

In a 2015 eulogy, Al-Hanooti recalled how her father imparted to her “his unconventional … approaches to education.”

“Unconventional approaches” can be seen in the assignments Al-Hanooti gave her students.

“What purpose does the use of the word ‘defend’ or ‘self-defense’ have when used by the Israeli legal team?” Al-Hanooti asked students in one assignment. “How does Israel use [sic] the Holocaust to victimize themselves show an example of a logical fallacy?” Al-Hanooti asked students whether pathos or logos is “the most effective tool for spreading awareness about the genocide,” referring to Israel’s actions.

“These messages reveal comments and behaviors that are disqualifying for an employee in a public school district,” said Erika Sanzi, Director of Outreach for Parents Defending Education, which filed the FOIA request into Al-Hanooti. “She clearly misunderstands her responsibility as a public employee whose job is to educate other people’s kids, not turn them into activists who agitate for her disturbing world view.”


Kassy Akiva: Anti-Israel Columbia Student Sues School For Suspending Him After Daily Wire Exposé
A Columbia University student who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” is suing the school for suspending him after The Daily Wire brought his inflammatory remarks to light.

Khymani James made those comments in a January post on Instagram, in which he said that “there should not be Zionists anywhere” and “the world is better without them.” James recorded the video during a meeting with the Center for Student Success and Intervention at Columbia, which had summoned James to discuss earlier anti-Semitic comments he had made.

Columbia, which did not initially take action against James, suspended him one day after The Daily Wire reported his comments on April 25. In the lawsuit, James claims the university only suspended him to save face amid national backlash.

“The timing and language of the sanction letter makes it clear that Columbia acted in response to external forces and national media attention,” the suit, filed in the New York State Supreme Court, reads. “The University is allowing external forces, applying pressure to it, to dictate outcomes in individual student disciplinary cases.”

James announced the lawsuit in a Friday post on X, accusing Columbia of discrimination, as well as “cowering” to “billionaire donors” and “fascist politicians.” In a follow-up tweet, he posted a picture of himself flipping off the camera on a jet ski.

“James has been a victim of Columbia’s anti-Palestinian bias, severely punished, though not himself Palestinian, as a supporter of the rights of the Palestinian people,” the suit states.

It goes on to claim that Columbia violated New York State’s Human Rights Law, New York City’s Human Rights Law, and standards for educational institutions outlined in the 1980 case Tedeschi v. Wagner College.

Columbia University declined to comment. James’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Columbia Covered Travel Costs for Suspended Student Who Fantasized About 'Murdering Zionists,' Citing 'Concern About His Safety,' Lawsuit Reveals
The lawsuit could prove embarrassing for Columbia as it moves forward with its fall semester following former president Minouche Shafik's August resignation. It could also embolden anti-Semitic protesters should James succeed in the case, which seeks "damages and other relief for Columbia's wilful misuse of its student conduct system to discriminate against ... James." Columbia's interim president, Katrina Armstrong, has expressed support for such protesters, apologizing for the "harm" caused by police sweeps used to restore order on campus following the encampment James participated in.

Asked to confirm if Columbia used university funds to book James’s travel home, a spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon it would not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit states that James's suspension is active. It goes on to describe James as a victim of "anti-Palestinian bias," accusing Columbia of privileging "‘Zionist Jewish’ people over everyone on campus who does not share their views."

"First, James as a person of color is squarely within a protected class of black and brown-skinned students who have been the major targets of Columbia’s disciplinary actions arising from pro-Palestinian expression," the suit reads. "Secondly, James has been a victim of Columbia’s anti-Palestinian bias, severely punished, though not himself Palestinian, as a supporter of the rights of the Palestinian people."

"Third, James has been a victim of reverse discrimination, as Columbia privileges a class of self-described ‘Zionist Jewish’ people over everyone on campus who does not share their views."

James served as a leader of the unlawful tent encampment that disrupted university life at the close of the last academic year. In an April 21 incident, he mobilized participants to remove "Zionists" who he said entered the encampment.

"Repeat after me! We have Zionists! Who have entered the camp!" James chanted. He led students in forming a "human chain" to slowly push the "Zionists" out of the area.


NYPost Editorial: The New York Times weeping for Hassan Nasrallah shows how deep media rot runs
Terror master Hassan Nasrallah is dead at the hands of the heroic IDF, and the New York Times is very upset.

Per the paper’s simpering posthumous piece on the former Hezbollah chief — killed in a daring airstrike on the headquarters of his murderous cadre — Nasrallah was a “gifted orator” who “maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.”

The piece’s headline ran, “Protesters Mourn Nasrallah’s Death Around the World.”

That echoed the Washington Post’s equally obsequious piece, praising Nasrallah for transforming Hezbollah into a “potent regional force” and portraying him as a cuddly and beloved religious leader.

What’s next — a reappraisal of Adolf Hitler over his oratorical gifts or Benito Mussolini and his train schedule improvements?

Maybe a paean to the egalitarian desires of Pol Pot? The unshakable faith of Jim Jones?

Look, we get that the Times, the (other) Post and much of the rest of the media have turned deeply anti-Israel, with much of their audience hungry for terror apologia.

But Nasrallah was as bad as they get — a bought-and-paid-for satrap of Iran’s regional hegemonic project, a blood-spattered, terror-dealing antisemite and Holocaust denier.


Richard Landes: Finally a wee bit of pushback from a CNN anchor
As of two days before this interview the count - from the notoriously reliable Lebanese Health Ministry which, like the Hamas ministry of Health, does not distinguish combatant from civilian deaths - was 558 including 58 women (ie 10% of the total, not anywhere near the 50% one would expect were Israel to be bombing indiscriminately. That translates into “huge tolls for civilian casualties” for Hellyer.

And I think that at this moment in time you see the international community, as you've seen in the at the UN over the past week, called for de escalation, call for a ceasefire, call for an end to this spiral.

Back to the hobby-horse. Playing up civilian casualties, international outrage, calls for immediate ceasefires, getting Israel not to deal with the problems it faces from enemies dedicated to destroying it. That’s the job of a propagandist operating for the “axis of resistance.”

Golodryga: Yeah, I believe that as you note, the framing is very important. I I don't believe Hezbollah had accepted a ceasefire yet either.

An appropriate course correction.

So as we are going to be learning more on who this exact target, well, we know who the target was, but but whether Israel was able was able to assassinate Haniya or anyone around him, we don't yet know that. We do know that the civilian death toll will likely be very high. And we are ready and they're ready. Ohh. I'm sorry. Hassan Nasralla. You're right. You're right Hassan Nasralla. Yes, yes,

A’: but but also cost of civilians in in such a target. As you well know, collateral damage shouldn't entail hundreds or thousands of people for a single target. Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the first time that we've seen huge civilian casualties for a single target at the hands of the IDF.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 11 civilians died in a bombing that targeted not only Nasrallah but the leadership of Hizbullah. It looks like civilian-combatant ratio was about 1:1! Unfortunately this won’t be the first time Hellyer (and so many others CNN seems to love to interview) will make wildly false accusations against the IDF invokikng “huge [sic] civilian casualties for a single [sic] target.”

Golodryga: Yeah, and we will likely see a significant civilian death toll from this target, again… CNN confirming that Nasrallah was the target. H.A. Hellyer thank you for your time.

Huh?

Yes, thank you Hisham for your systematic misinformation which we at CNN apparently can’t get enough of.
Irish Holocaust-themed cartoon on Israel prompts uproar
A caricature featuring Holocaust references that depicts Israel’s actions against Hezbollah as owing to a desire to avenge antisemitism is generating controversy in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Ireland’s chief rabbi, Yoni Wieder, on Monday told JNS that the cartoon, which appeared on Sept. 21 in The Irish Times, “is just one example” of several recent media “portrayals that play right into harmful antisemitic tropes.”

The caricature, which a leader of a Northern Ireland conservative party condemned in parliament last week as reminiscent of “Nazi propaganda,” shows a soldier with a Star of David armband thinking: “They all hate us so let’s get ‘em” and a charred individual holding an object that’s exploding in the shape of a yellow Jewish star as a bleeding body lies at his feet.

A text in the caricature by Martyn Turner reads: “When the country which has the biggest chip on its shoulder may also have the smallest chip in your electronic device. If they used as much ingenuity in making peace as they do in making war the Middle East would be a better place.”

The caricature appears to reference the explosion on Sept. 17 and 18 of thousands of pagers and other devices in the possession of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and Syria. The explosions, which Hezbollah blamed on Israel, killed dozens of people and wounded thousands.

Depicting Zionism, which predates the Holocaust, and Israel’s defensive actions as owing to a Jewish psychological complex about the genocide is a common theme in anti-Israeli and antisemitic discourse.

The cartoon was “a malevolent trope, redolent of the hideous use of the Jewish caricature that has been part of the antisemitic imagery for centuries and in Nazi propaganda,” said Steve Aiken, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, during a speech on Sept. 23 in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the regional parliament of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. Aiken was quoting and endorsing a statement by the Holocaust Awareness Ireland association about the cartoon.




Stephen Pollard: Pro-Hezbollah professor tells BBC that ‘chosen people’ seek to colonise the ‘whole region’. Thank you very much, says BBC
The timing could hardly have been more exquisitely pointed.

Yesterday three leading Jewish communal organisations - the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Community Security Trust – came together with the Chief Rabbi to endorse a report accusing the BBC of being “institutionally hostile” to Israel, broadcasting “inaccurate” coverage of the war with Hamas.

The report, compiled and edited by the former director of television at the BBC, Danny Cohen, says the corporation has made a series of “false and damaging claims about Israel’s conduct of this war” and has thus fuelled “the flames of antisemitism that have spread across the world”.

The Jewish groups endorsed his report with statement rightly pointing out that the BBC’s coverage has “led many British Jews to conclude that the BBC has become, in practical terms, institutionally hostile to Israel…The evidence presented in this report goes far beyond what might reasonably be attributed to errors made in the fog of war. These are not academic errors. They have real world consequences. Inaccurate media reporting on the conflict contributes to the delegitimisation of Israel in the public sphere, which in turn fuels anti-Jewish hatred, and has made British Jews and Jews around the world less safe and secure in their communities.”

So how did the BBC react to this damning accusation?

It did not just revert to its usual form, as outlined in the report. It went much further. This morning its flagship news show, the Today programme on Radio 4, chose to give coverage to an Iranian government apologist, Prof Seyed Mohammad Marandi of Tehran University, to broadcast a series of grotesque antisemitic slurs – and to refuse to interrupt, let alone question, him as he offered listeners his vile Jew hate.

After the usual accusation of genocide – a word now shockingly diminished in meaning after having been adopted by anti-Israel fanatics across the globe to describe Israel’s military operation in Gaza – Marandi began with a boilerplate Iranian regime rant (prompting some gentle questioning from presenter Mishal Husain), starting with the idea that there are no such things as Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut: “The Israeli regime will say what it says and the Western media will justify it. The Western media will say these are Hezbollah strongholds. Whenever one hears the word stronghold you can tell it’s Israeli propaganda. These are homes, these are neighbourhoods. They have destroyed parts of southern Beirut, a city like London. It’s like saying on 7/7 they bombed a British regime stronghold.”

Do I need to point out the warped sickness of this argument, given that what happened in London on 7/7 was Islamist terrorism of the exact sort funded and enabled by the Iranian regime?

Marandi had, however, only just begun – and Husain then sat back and listened as he launched into his stream of Jew hate.

Bear in mind as you read this that not once did Husain interrupt him in this section of the interview, let alone pose a question. The entire screed was broadcast without pause: “Just as the UK supports this Holocaust in Gaza, just as it supports slaughter of the Lebanese and just as it justifies whatever action the Israeli regime takes, we have no doubt they will be with the Israelis until the very last Palestinian.

“Because we are all Amelek – we are inferior, they are the chosen people, they are your allies and it’s basically an extension of the Western empire over the last few hundred years – the civilising mission. Wherever the West has gone, they are civilised and that justifies the destruction of the uncivilised and the barbarians, so this is basically a repeat of history and the only solution is resistance.

“The only way forward is resistance because there is nothing that will stop this Israeli regime because that is the nature of the regime…it believes in ethno-supremacism, it believes they are the chosen people, they have exceptional rights and therefore they have exceptional rights to the whole region. It’s not just Palestine, it goes beyond the borders of Palestine.”


Four IDF soldiers wounded in Samaria counter-terror ops
Four Israel Defense Forces soldiers were wounded during counter-terror operations in northern Samaria overnight Monday, the military announced.

One soldier from the IDF’s elite Duvdevan unit was seriously wounded and three others moderately hurt during an exchange of fire with Palestinian terrorists in the Balata camp in Nablus (Shechem).

All four were evacuated to hospital for treatment, according to the IDF.

The soldiers had been conducting an arrest raid when terrorists opened fire on them, according to the military.

One Palestinian was killed and another wounded in the exchange, added the IDF.

Israeli forces located explosive charges, a gun, ammunition and other weapon parts in civilian areas of the camp, including a cafe and shops.

Separately, IDF forces killed Abed Shaheen, accused by Israel of planning and executing attacks on troops in the area. He had recently plotted to create a terror cell to target soldiers around Nablus.
Construction of PA Samaria ‘terror neighborhood’ continues unabated
The Palestinian Authority is forging ahead with the construction of a luxury neighborhood in Samaria exclusively reserved for Palestinians who have served at least five years in Israeli prisons for terrorism-related offenses, a Binyamin Regional Council spokesperson has told JNS.

The 100-villa neighborhood is located alongside Route 60 in the Binyamin region, between the Jewish communities of Ofra and Shilo.

Because the construction is taking place in Area B, which under the Oslo Agreements is under Israeli security control but P.A. civil control, Israel’s Civil Administration cannot legally impose a demolition order, according to the spokesperson. The Civil Administration is responsible for all administrative aspects of the local population within Area C, which is under full Israeli control.

At the end of June, representatives of the Binyamin Regional Council penned a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the other Cabinet members alerting them to what they said was rampant illegal P.A. construction taking place throughout the area, including the new terrorist neighborhood.

However, according to Naomi Kahn, director of the Regavim NGO’s International Division, the building project continues to move forward full steam ahead, courtesy of U.S. and E.U. tax revenues.

“U.S. and European tax dollars go not only to fund terrorism and to pay the families of ‘martyrs’ whose great source of glory is murdering Jews, they also house released terrorists in luxury apartments in a ‘terrorists only’ neighborhood. This endangers the very people these terrorists tried to kill the first time, and their families. This is an insane situation,” Kahn told JNS.

“European governments that are funding the P.A. and are enabling this—we give them the benefit of the doubt that they don’t understand that their money is going to fund terrorism and support terrorists,” she said.
Most Gaza border residents have returned home, report shows
A year after the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught, a report by Israel’s Tekuma Administration—the Israeli government’s arm for rehabilitating the Gaza periphery—reveals significant progress in resettling and rebuilding the affected communities.

Released on Tuesday, the report shows that 87% of residents have returned to their homes, with efforts continuing to address housing, security and economic challenges.

On the eve of the attack, 63,978 residents were living in communities adjacent to Gaza. Of these, 49,449 people have returned, while 12,708 remain in temporary housing solutions. The report details 244 projects initiated, totaling $1.7 billion—90% of the annual Tekuma budget.

Temporary housing solutions fall into three categories: urban, integrated and rural. Each project addresses security, community rehabilitation, construction, infrastructure, economic development and heritage preservation.

The Tekuma Administration has invested significantly in security infrastructure upgrades, including the establishment of a centralized operations center to coordinate defense activities and implement comprehensive security measures for residents in the region.

This arm of Tekuma, working on behalf of the Defense Ministry, coordinates IDF activities in the region and implements security measures for residents.

A pilot program to enhance community security response is underway in five communities closest to the Gaza border, testing new technological components such as observation devices, drones and a dedicated civilian communication network. This program is expected to expand to more towns in the region.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Israeli Left, Bleeding Support, Sees New Voters In Captured Hamas Fighters (satire)
The shrinking contingent of the politically-progressive sector of the electorate in the country hopes to combat its diminishing prospects of ever holding power again, banking on a plan to replace their long-gone contingency with imprisoned terrorists taken in and around the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year, a spokeswoman for one of the parties disclosed today.

Leaders of the once-mighty Labor Party – now a fraction of its former self – and its counterpart in The Democrats, Meretz, hit on the notion several weeks ago as survey after survey indicated that despite widespread distaste for incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his bare-majority, narrow-right-wing coalition, and its failure to anticipate and prevent the current war, the Labor-Meretz odds of ever holding significant political influence in national elected office grow ever longer, amid broad public acknowledgment that the flagship enterprise of the Left, which involves generous concession to Palestinian ambitions, has resulted not in peace, but in increased terrorism and barbarism by Palestinian terror groups.

That last element gave The Democrats leaders an idea: why not harness the Palestinian vote?

“Obviously the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote,” explained Yair Golan, a former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff and the party leader. “But we do have plenty of them in prison, and I don’t see them being allowed back home anytime soon, certainly not while the fighting still rages. All we have to do is get the Supreme Court, which has the same ideas as we do, to grant them citizenship. Shouldn’t take too much. At least our kind still controls that institution.”


Houthi drone slams into ship, missile hits another in Red Sea attacks
Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched an explosive-loaded drone that crashed into one ship Tuesday in the Red Sea and a missile that exploded against another.

The first attack took place some 110 kilometers (70 miles) off the port city of Hodeida and targeted the Panama-flagged oil tanker Cordelia Moon, the multinational Joint Maritime Information Center said. A captain on a ship saw four “splashes” near the vessel, the center overseen by the US Navy said. That likely would have been missiles launched at the vessel that missed.

The drone boat later damaged the Cordelia Moon, which sustained a puncture to one of its ballast tanks in the attack. Those tanks control a ship’s buoyancy. Houthi strikes in the past have targeted ships at their waterline to disable the vessels.

Drone boats have been increasingly used by the Houthis. The ship had been heading north to the Suez Canal with armed private security guards aboard, the private security firm Ambrey said.

Another attack with a missile targeted a separate ship also heading north to the Suez Canal with armed security on board, Ambrey said. The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center later identified it as the Liberian-flagged bulk carrier Minoan Courage.

Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree later claimed the two attacks in a prerecorded message, though he identified a different vessel as the second ship attacked. The discrepancy could not be immediately reconciled.

Saree said in a prerecorded video earlier Tuesday that the rebels had launched drones targeting Israel — attacks that were not confirmed in Israel. The Houthis have exaggerated claims in the past.


Head of Iranian unit countering Mossad was Israeli agent, says ex-president Ahmadinejad
The head of an Iranian secret service unit set up to target Mossad agents working in the Islamic Republic turned out to be an Israeli agent himself, according to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Speaking to CNN Turk, Ahmadinejad claimed Monday that a further 20 agents in the Iranian intelligence team tasked with monitoring Israeli spying activities also turned against Tehran.

The alleged double agents provided Israel with sensitive information on the Iranian nuclear program, according to his comments in the interview, which were widely picked up by international media.

Ahmadinejad said the agents were behind some key Mossad successes in Iran, including the 2018 theft of nuclear program documents that were taken from Tehran to Israel and revealed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The trove is thought to have been a factor in convincing then-US president Donald Trump to pull out of the nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran.

The head of the counterintelligence unit was revealed as a double agent in 2021 but he and all of the other alleged Mossad moles were able to flee the country and are now living in Israel, claimed Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist known for his hardline anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and for the violent crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 reelection. He was prevented from running again for president earlier this year.

Other Iranian officials have in the past remarked about Mossad’s penetration in Iran. A former Iranian minister who served as an adviser to former president Hassan Rouhani said in 2022 that senior officials in Tehran should be fearing for their lives due to the “infiltration” of Israel’s spy agency, according to the London-based Persian-language Manoto news site.


Noa Kirel, Israel’s biggest star, takes on a new role
Noa Kirel is the Taylor Swift of Israel. She’s the country’s top pop star, a powerhouse of talent and entrepreneurship. She writes, sings, dances and acts and, in an electrifying performance, she represented Israel at Eurovision in Liverpool in 2023, coming third. At the age of 16 she became the youngest ever judge on a talent show when she joined the panel of Israel’s Got Talent. As the brand ambassador for Adidas and Peugeot, her image is ubiquitous, and recently she became the face of Samsung Galaxy AI, her face on mile-high electronic billboards. About to star in her first major TV drama, she has recently signed with global music distributor The Orchard, a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment, releasing a single worldwide. And she’s only 23.

Kirel has been famous in Israel since she was 15, when she released her first single. In her teenage years, during Covid she toured around in a band, part of her national service.

“In those small shows I earned… a new audience for me of people of my age, that they saw me performing like that in a very humble way and they loved it. And after that they bought a ticket to my show, so it was win-win situation, as they say.”

When we meet on Zoom, Kirel is make-up free, dressed casually in a blue Adidas sweatshirt, her hair newly washed, and looks like any high-school girl, were it not for her fabulously manicured nails.

As we talk, though, it’s clear to see she is focused, driven, confident and articulate (like many young Israelis, she speaks with an almost American accent). In the background are several members of her team, management and PR. Kirel is unmistakably a brand. Her long-time manager is Roberto Ben-Shoshan.

“I have an incredible team that I built for eight, almost nine years of my career,” she says. “I work with them and it's like family, they know me so well. We go together and feel the energy together. I have an amazing team that I trust and I let them do their job. But, as an artist, I need to be on top of everything, it’s my career.”

We begin by discussing Wonder, a series produced by Ananay-Paramount and Yes Studios, a suspenseful drama revolving around Noya (played by Kirel), a 17-year-old who dies in a car crash. Her father, Avner, a retired combat officer, joins forces with Daria, her best friend, to investigate Noya’s death.




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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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