Tuesday, October 08, 2024

10/08 Links Pt2: Dara Horn: October 7 Created a Permission Structure for Anti-Semitism; The 7 October deniers; The West has turned its back on Jews

From Ian:

Dara Horn: October 7 Created a Permission Structure for Anti-Semitism
The consequences for Jews of this hatred are obvious. Indeed, many American Jews have changed their behavior, hiding outward signs of Jewish identity and thinking twice before sharing their identity with colleagues and acquaintances. But its consequences for non-Jews are incalculable—not because of the often inaccurate Holocaust-education claim that Jews are the canary-in-the-coal-mine whose persecution indicates that other groups will later be persecuted, but because this permission structure devours human potential.

Imagine how many intelligent people in the 19th and early 20th centuries devoted their talents to justifying “scientific” anti-Semitism instead of doing actual science, or how many years of oppression have been endured by populations duped into thinking that their enemy was “Zionism” instead of their Soviet-sponsored dictatorships or fundamentalist regimes. Human-rights activists have appropriately raised awareness of very real injustices committed by Israel. But the enormous investment in exposing primarily Jewish perfidy—the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed more resolutions condemning Israel than any other nation in the world—has left fewer resources to address rampant human-rights abuses elsewhere. Meanwhile, any Israeli government is less likely to consider legitimate criticism from outsiders, because the supply of such criticism has been so thoroughly poisoned by those who want Jews dead. Blood, treasure, and talent in the Muslim world have been horrifically wasted in war after war against Israel.

Palestinian Arabs have borne the brunt of their leaders’ and manipulators’ anti-Jewish obsession, winding up subjected to autocratic rule, used as human pawns, and deprived of multiple opportunities for statehood, collaboration, prosperity, and peace. Like Israeli Jews, they aren’t going anywhere; they, too, deserve freedom and dignity, and must build a future with their neighbors. For people in all of these societies, the costs of this fixation are high.

American institutions that cave to this hatred will also face these costs. Schools and universities lose their credibility and their ability to teach when educators let lies undermine learning. The same is true for other sectors of American life. A literary world where conformity is the price of entry is unworthy of the name. A prejudiced therapist is a contradiction in terms, rendering therapy itself impossible. Patients suffer when ideology derails doctors’ training. When swaths of colleagues are blacklisted and ostracized, untold possibilities for research and innovation are blithely destroyed.

The permission structure is here, alive and vivid. It always is. Thousands of years of Jewish experience suggest that we will continue on this course. But Jewish experience is not universal. One revolutionary idea in Jewish tradition, articulated everywhere from the Torah to the Israeli national anthem, is hope: Nothing is inevitable; people can change. Hope and a vision for the future of Israelis and Palestinians will have to come from Israelis and Palestinians themselves. But the future that we choose here in America is up to us.

American Holocaust educators often ask me what they should be teaching as the “lessons of the Holocaust.” The question itself is absurd. As one of my readers once put it, Auschwitz was not a university, and most Jews who arrived there were immediately gassed and incinerated, making it difficult for them to produce coursework in ethics for the rest of the world to enjoy.

But there is indeed something we can learn from the long history of anti-Semitism and the societies it has destroyed: We’ve fallen for this before. After this terrifying year, I hope we can find the courage to say, Never again.
The 7 October deniers
The toxic cynicism that has met reports of Hamas’s depravity has nothing to do with a desire for accuracy and evidence. There is no amount of evidence that will satisfy these people. From the off, there were horrifying indications that women had been a key target of Hamas that day. Footage emerged of kidnapped women with bloodied crotches. Murdered women were found, hands tied and stripped from the waist down. Later on, deeply researched reports by the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times – drawing on eyewitnesses, official accounts and video evidence – detailed rape, sexual torture and genital mutilation (Hamas seemed to extract a particular, perverse thrill from stabbing, shooting and driving nails into women’s vaginas). Even the UN – whose institutional bias against Israel is a running joke – concluded, in a report published in March, that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of rape, including gang rape, occurred’ on 7 October. ‘There are further accounts of individuals who witnessed at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women’, it added. There is reason to believe the rape was systematic, too; documents were found in the possession of Hamas terrorists, explaining how to say ‘Take off your pants’ in Hebrew. But even a year on, with a mountain of evidence beneath us, mention the rape of Israeli women to the apologists and you will get an eye roll.

Where the hardliners deny, the more mainstream sow doubt. The anti-Israel types seem to have come up with an entirely new, Israel-specific standard of journalistic proof. Apparently, unless they are presented with a hi-def snuff movie of the specific alleged crime in question, they cannot possibly assess its truthfulness. No amount of eyewitness testimonies or evidence will suffice, it seems. I suppose we should also free all of the convicted murderers, apart from those who were dumb enough to be caught killing on camera. This led Israel to reluctantly publish images of slain babies, and to hold screenings of footage of Hamas’s crimes, edited to protect the dignity of the dead and defiled. But it didn’t make the blindest bit of difference. Pro-Palestine activists even staged a protest outside of a screening in Los Angeles, denouncing the film as ‘propaganda’.

There are different motivations for this denialism. There are those who simply cannot accept how wrong they were about Israel and Hamas. For many years, Israel’s defences had protected not just Israeli civilians from harm, but also Western woke leftists from the consequences of their luxury beliefs. So long as the Islamist killers were kept at bay, Corbynistas could pretend that Hamas is a group of anti-imperialist resistance fighters – that it didn’t mean all that stuff in its founding covenant about murdering Jews. The pogrom confronted them with the grisly reality. But rather than admit they got this badly wrong, many leftists chose denial instead. They insisted that Our Hamas would never do something like that, even as they were presented with copious evidence to the contrary.

Then there is the anti-Semitism – the unvarnished Jew hatred that drives many of the fantastical and cynical claims about 7 October. This is Holocaust denial redux. For when people deny or downplay the Holocaust they aren’t just dabbling in a deeply offensive and suspect form of revisionist history. Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism – relying, as it does, on age-old anti-Semitic tropes. Namely, that Jews lie and that they exert some kind of hypnotic sway over Western governments and media. Naturally, this has over recent decades become bound up with anti-Israel agitation too, as the more conspiratorial anti-Semites argue that the Shoah was essentially a hoax designed to guilt trip the West into supporting the founding of Israel. It was grimly predictable that 7 October – the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust – would be denied too; used to demonise Israel as a lying, bloodthirsty nation, just as Jews have been demonised as lying and bloodthirsty for millennia.

7 October wasn’t the first Islamist atrocity to be given the tinfoil-hat treatment. More than 20 years on from 9/11, an alarmingly large number of Americans – let alone people in other parts of the world, who have borne the brunt of the American military misadventures that followed – still refuse to believe the ‘official narrative’ about the murderous assault on the World Trade Center. And yet it’s telling that, in 9/11 too, many conspiracy theorists see the secret hand of the Jews. It was ordered by Mossad, they splutter, in league with Jewish American neocons, desperate to invade the Middle East.

Here we see that the world’s oldest hatred is also the world’s most enduring conspiracy theory – ascribing Jews the role of killers, oppressors and master manipulators. Debunking the 7 October denialists is essential, but it sadly won’t be enough, until we can confront the conspiratorial bigotry that sees lying Jews everywhere.
The West has turned its back on Jews
Over time, it’s highly likely that the Democratic Party, despite the resistance of figures like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, will become ever more anti-Israel. The nine congresspeople who voted against supporting Israel in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October pogrom were all Democrats. Hamas supporters even succeeded in partially shutting down the California Democratic Party convention this year. In contrast, the strongest support for Israel now comes from Republicans.

Yet it seems like American Jews are not quite ready to jump ship en masse. Instead, some Jewish Democrats have waged targeted campaigns against the most radical anti-Zionists in Congress. By pouring funds into selected races, they have succeeded in eliminating two members of ‘the Squad’ – Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush – and have been active as well at the more local level. From ascendancy to self-defence

In the longer run, these triumphs could prove to be fleeting. One in five younger Americans believes the Holocaust is a myth, while half think Israel should be ‘ended’ and handed to Palestinians. Particularly troubling is the influence of social media. According to Pew, about one in three Latino teenagers says they are ‘constantly’ on the largely pro-Hamas, CCP-controlled TikTok. Overall, in the US, a country where most still support Israel and express positive views of Jews, blacks, Latinos and even Asians express more negative sentiments, particularly among the younger generations.

These tensions make life difficult even in cities historically friendly to Jews. In southern California, where I live, pro-Hamas demonstrations have forced at least one local synagogue to relocate its services, others have been vandalised, while demonstrators halted traffic in the traditionally Jewish Fairfax District. The home owned by Michael Tuchin, president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was recently attacked with smoke bombs and spattered with fake blood. Jews in London, Paris, Berlin, Brooklyn and San Francisco have experienced similar attacks.

Progressive, anti-Zionist Jews are a diminishing force and have little future. They now make up roughly 10 to 15 per cent of the campus Jewish population, according to Hersh’s research. Indeed, for many Jews, 7 October spelled the demise of the whole logic of progressive Judaism – the ‘heal the world’ mantra of Reform and liberal Jews. Such heady notions lose their lustre when Jews’ very survival is at stake. Ultimately, Hersh suggests that most anti-Zionist students, being from secular backgrounds and disproportionately ‘nonbinary’, are unlikely to remain deeply attached to the broader community or produce much of the next generation.

Orthodox Jews already largely segregate themselves in selected neighbourhoods and send their children to religious schools. One recent study suggests that, as a percentage of the American Jewish diaspora, the Orthodox community will likely more than double in size by 2063 – reflecting the below-replacement birth rates among non-Orthodox American Jews. On college campuses it’s the Orthodox Chabad, the ministry of the Lubavitcher movement, that is most present.

Of course, most Jews may remain Reform or non-aligned. But in the current circumstance, even left-of-centre Jews cannot be too picky about allies, such as Christian evangelicals or Hindu fundamentalists, who have generally supported Israel and a Jewish presence in the West.

Author Joseph Epstein suggests that the time has come for Jews to practise some ‘self-segregation’, much as in the past. This new inward-looking turn can be seen in the growth of groups like Hatzolah, which provides free security and emergency services in heavily Jewish parts of New York and Los Angeles. Some of the volunteers come from the ranks of the US military as well as the Israel Defence Forces. Throughout the diaspora, Jewish schools and institutions are paying for elaborate security systems.

Jewish geography is also changing. In a remarkable shift, Jewish students are beginning to migrate away from big cities, ditching Ivy League colleges and their equivalents for more tolerant schools in, of all places, the deep South, which tends to be less hostile to Israel and Jews in general. An exodus of Jewish talent and genius – not yet extinct – could now benefit these red states much as America benefited from the Nazi-induced migrations in the 1930s.

Although some Jews, facing a harsh environment, will choose to hide their identity, there are signs that many are coming together across sectarian lines. On some campuses, such as mine at Chapman University and my daughter’s at ultra-leftist Sarah Lawrence College, students – both Orthodox and Reform – are collaborating to present Israel’s side of the story, and to defend their rights on campus.

This is the new reality of a Jewish community that is both more assertive and less progressive. At a time when the diaspora’s glory days have passed, a shift to pragmatic politics and self-defence has become urgent. It marks a return to attitudes and approaches that have allowed for Jewish survival for the past three millenia.


Tikvah Fund: The Fighting Front Lines: Lessons From the Most Consequential Year in Modern Jewish History
The year that passed between October 7, 2023, and October 7, 2024, has been one of the most consequential in modern Jewish history. As we commemorate the many tragic events of 10/7—and all that has happened since then—many will focus on mourning the dead, the plight of the hostages, and the rise of anti-Semitism. And that is all important. But this moment also calls for another sort of reflection—a conversation about strength, resilience, the obligation to confront evil, and what both American Jews and Israelis must learn from the last year.

This is just such a conversation. A few days before the anniversary of October 7, Tikvah convened Ruth Wisse, Dara Horn, Liel Leibovitz, and Elliot Kaufman to join Jonathan Silver for a discussion about some of the essential questions the Jewish people confront in the wake of the past year.

What civilizational lessons must Jews take from this war and the global reaction to Israel's active self-defense? How do the Jewish people stand tall for our interests, reject the self-identification of victimhood, and claim our rightful place in the world? What responsibility do the Jewish people have to defend American ideals in the face of enemies who hate not only Israel but the animating principles of Western civilization?

The great Jewish writer Milton Himmelfarb once wrote that "Each Jew knows how thoroughly ordinary he is; yet taken together we seem caught up in things great and inexplicable...Big things seem to happen around us and to us."

For good and for ill, never has Himmelfarb's observation been more true. Join the Tikvah community as we reflect on all that's happened and how we can rise to meet this moment in Jewish history.

This conversation is generously sponsored by Stephanie Dishal in memory of her parents Sidney and Anna Dishal.


Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Why Israel Deserves Our Support
By failing to name Islamism as our enemy, we allowed it to prosper. Consider, for instance, what happened in Afghanistan. After 20 years of fighting that enemy without a name, spending trillions of dollars and wasting thousands of lives, we abandoned the country to the Islamist thugs of the Taliban. It was one of the most disgraceful retreats in American history, cloaked by shabby political expediency. We looked away as the Islamists catapulted Afghan women and minorities back to another Dark Age.

There have been other consequences too, often much closer to home. As we remained silent, the Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots quietly entrenched themselves across Western cities, from Australian universities to Manchester suburbs. Enabling them to build mosques and take over schools, moreover, our silence has allowed them to proclaim themselves as spokespeople for every Muslim in the West.

This continued reluctance to see the enemy before us allows it to burrow into more and more hearts. As increasing numbers of desperate people arrive upon our shores from war-torn lands, many are finding solace in a new community in those same mosques and schools, as well as online. And for those of us unwilling to turn a blind eye, our Islamist enemies are ready with their tried-and-tested accusations of Islamophobia, carefully deployed to shut down discussion of the true nature of their threat. Any critics of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots are defamed as racist and intolerant — as purveyors of “hate”.

In this effort to freeze discussion the Islamists are aided and abetted by the ideological Left. In Europe, they proclaim their faith in multiculturalism. In America, social justice warriors do the work on campuses and adjacent institutions.

And so, for the moment at least, we find ourselves at an impasse. More than 20 years after 9/11, and only one year after October 7, we are still refusing to name our enemy. The irony is that not everyone struggles as we do in the West. Consider Saudi Arabia, Islam’s foundational home, the protector of Mecca and Medina, yet which has nonetheless banned the Muslim Brotherhood. A host of other Muslim countries have managed something similar: Syria, Jordan, the UAE, Egypt. This has been a startling transformation. Back in the last century, the Saudis welcomed the Brotherhood, put them in charge of schools and mosques — and funded the Islamists to spread their ideology right across the region and beyond. I witnessed this firsthand, in Kenya. They came to my home when I was only 15, and seized control of our local mosque. One reason I understand the Muslim Brotherhood is that, as a teenager, I was recruited to it.

At first, the Saudis thought they and the Brotherhood were ideologically aligned. But the Brotherhood eventually turned around and tried to overthrow them. At that point, the Saudi princes, capable of ruthlessness as well as generosity, rounded them up and expelled them from their schools, their mosques, their newspapers — and their soil.

Today, a year on from Hamas’ heinous attack on Israel, we should welcome Israel’s war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and most importantly, against Iran. Yet Israel must also learn from America’s mistakes. Remember that the war isn’t over until the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is destroyed. And for that to happen, we must first recognise our enemy in our midst, and that begins by naming it.
Seth Mandel: The Next Mutation of American Anti-Semitism
Yesterday was the anniversary of only one thing: the mass murder and rape of Jews. The demonstrations, therefore, fell into two categories: for and against. In the “for” category was one led by a familiar face: Nerdeen Kiswani, who took a break from trying to set Jews on fire to celebrate others who set Jews on fire. “Oct. 7 was a prison break and all the atrocity propaganda that we saw that came out of it was lies,” Kiswani sermonized, an imitation Father Coughlin for the Tik Tok generation.

The one confusing part of Kiswani’s rant was that she suggested the 1,200 innocent civilians “maybe” murdered on that day were killed by Israeli helicopters, which in Kiswani’s mind should make the IDF the good guys.

But Kiswani is bound to become coherent eventually, because she’ll have lots of practice. It’s clear she sees this as her calling, and the New York Times agrees. “Ms. Kiswani bills herself as part of a bolder, new generation of Palestinian American activists who are calling for what she says earlier generations also wanted, but feared to say in public: the replacement of the state of Israel with a state called Palestine, covering all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” the paper wrote in a flattering profile of the fair Lady Genocide.

The Times is just trying to be evenhanded. While on the one hand, it writes, Kiswani calls for the destruction of Mideast Jewry from the river to the sea, on the other, “Ms. Kiswani insists she is not antisemitic.” Well, OK, if she insists, I guess we have to take her at her word, the way the world took Hitler at his word he wouldn’t invade his neighbors.

Kiswani may have started Her Struggle on campus years ago, but her very professionalized caravan of mouth-frothing human Halloween displays left that all behind a long time ago. She’s an example of what coddled campus radicals turn into.

The Nazi Youth eventually grew up, too. So what happens when this generation of lost campus Jew-baiters grows up?

Even more than that, what will it take for them to hold the public’s attention? After all, we get acclimated to circumstances pretty quickly. Tent encampments designed to bar Jews from public spaces seemed pretty shocking a year ago. But Ivy League administrators ensured that it became normalized. It’s been nearly a year since Paul Kessler, a Jewish Californian, was killed by a pro-Palestinian protester not far from Los Angeles on a street corner. People seem to have gotten over that.

The tent isn’t the point of the tentifada. The point is the violence, the normalization of second-class citizenship for Jews, the loyalty oaths, the street mobs outside Jewish-owned restaurants smashing windows. It’s the evil energy that can’t be re-corked. How will American institutions inoculate themselves against what has been released into the air? Unless you’re focused on that, you’re still fighting the last war.
Ed Husain: Oct. 7 Tested Israel and the U.S. We Came Out Stronger
I was in Israel on Oct. 7 of last year. I am not Jewish nor Israeli, but I was there in a bomb shelter, night after night, and that mixed experience of fear and defiance has forced me to share in Israeli trauma and trajectory. The United States, Israel, and its Arab allies are stronger today.

But what's next? Iran seeks to weaken us.

While in Israel, within 90 seconds of a warning siren going off, night or day, we were to run to our nearest shelter. This was war. Yet the true horror was the flow of news that Iran-sponsored Hamas was killing Israelis and Arabs, almost 1,300 dead, many raped and more injured, 251 peaceful people kidnapped.

I was in Tel Aviv for the first-ever global summit of American, Arab, Palestinian, Turkish, Indonesian, and other government leaders, investors, and philanthropists who planned to build bridges, airports, roads, ports to connect the Middle East for greater economic prosperity led by an American think-tank. Hamas stopped the summit. Now, all flights to and from America were cancelled. But flights to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Turkey continued—and several above Saudi air space. This was the cause of Israel's new strength: pro-American Arab and moderate Muslim allies standing with Israel, in words and deeds.

In his recent book On Leadership, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair writes that politics is part-philosophy, part-performance, and part-practicality. Three years prior to the Oct. 7 attack, a new philosophy of peace with Israel, the Abraham Accords, gave the Middle East a different moral compass. An American-led order where Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others trade and travel, pray and prosper.

That terrible day, the world felt changed. The victories of recent years fell away and Iran and its allies were ascendant. A year later, with the death of the president of Iran, the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, the elimination of the top leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, and Gaza open to new governance, the makings of a new Middle East are within our grasp.

But Iran will not quietly surrender. Last week, it launched 180 ballistic missiles against Israel and vowed to attack U.S. bases across the Middle East. We should expect Hezbollah sleeper cells in Europe and America to try and harm us in our homes. Make no mistake: Israel is the first line of defence for America and our Sunni Arab friends.
Seth Mandel: Did God Create the World to Meddle in U.S. Elections?
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that a few Democratic aides, as well as one sitting Democratic senator, have gone a bit around the bend.

“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a potential secretary of state in a Kamala Harris administration, said on CNN last week.

The Hill reports that “a senior Senate Democratic aide backed Murphy’s claim” by directing the reporter’s attention specifically to South Lebanon and saying: “Look at everything that’s been happening. One hundred percent interference into domestic politics. He’s done it his entire career.”

Let’s zoom out for a moment. We are observing the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a massive regional war with an unprecedentedly bloody invasion of Israel. Hamas refuses to surrender or to return the hostages it took, so the war continues. We’ve also since learned that Hezbollah had similar plans in the works up north, so Israel undertook the most impressive pinpoint strikes on terrorists in the history of warfare to hamstring the Iranian proxy’s ability to carry out its planned mass murder of civilians.

If you read the preceding paragraph and said “sounds like Israel’s meddling in U.S. elections,” you should probably neither be in the Senate nor be entrusted to handle heavy machinery.

I would also add that Murphy and the brave anonymous Democratic aides quoted by the Hill are not making a very strong case for Harris if their argument boils down to: The more our allies defeat the bad guys and eliminate terrorists with American blood on their hands, the worse it is for Harris’s campaign.

Of course, that isn’t actually true. Harris has not squandered her lead in the polls as Israel has killed bad guys. There is no reverse-correlation because, excluding this country’s elite institutions of higher education, Americans don’t like terrorists and they do like Israel.

Yet there is reason to worry that Harris doesn’t think Chris Murphy is so crazy.

“Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?” CBS’s Bill Whitaker asked the vice president.

“With all due respect,” Harris responded, “the better question is: Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”


A Year Later, Kibbutz Nir Oz Still Fighting To Tell the Real Story of Oct. 7
Irit Lahav, a 58-year-old professional tour guide, knows how to walk clueless foreigners through unfamiliar terrain.

But in the year since she survived the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre and mass abduction in her kibbutz, Nir Oz, Lahav has struggled to explain to international media what happened that day. No matter how many interviews she arranges with her grieving neighbors or tours she gives of their burned-out homes, some journalists have continued to tell the story of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust as another chapter in Israel’s supposed persecution of the Palestinians.

"People are saying Israel is bad," Lahav, a former peace activist, told the Washington Free Beacon late last month during a visit to Nir Oz. "What? The Palestinians are holding our hostages ... How would one feel if it was their daughter, their grandfather, their father, their 2 -year-old children, baby Kfir [Bibas in Hamas captivity in Gaza]?"

"The Palestinians are very good at PR, they've done a very good job, and Israeli people say, 'We don't need to explain ourselves because we know that we are moral people,'" she added. "But at the end of the day, people only see what the media shows."

Major English-language news outlets have faced scrutiny for apparent anti-Israel bias in their coverage of the Oct. 7 terror attack and Israel’s resulting war to destroy Hamas in Gaza and bring home the hostages, which has expanded into a multifront conflict with Iran and its other terrorist affiliates. The Washington Post has distinguished itself with repeated factual errors at Israel's expense and a foreign desk packed with former employees of Al Jazeera, a Qatari media network that the Jewish state recently banned from operating in the country, citing alleged ties to Hamas.

Lahav recalled with anger how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on the August funeral of Avraham Munder, 79, who was abducted from his home in Nir Oz on Oct. 7 along with his wife, daughter, and grandson. Munder's son was murdered in the attack. Munder "suffered bodily and mental torture for months" in Hamas captivity before he was killed, according to the Nir Oz community.

The CBC report, which aired on the state broadcaster’s flagship nightly news program, "The National," made no mention of the Oct. 7 attack or what happened to Munder or his family other than to question "whether it was Hamas or Israel's attacks [on Hamas] that killed" him. Mourners were interviewed only about the Israeli government’s failure to secure the release of the remaining hostages. Then, the segment cut to footage of Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.

"Some of their gruesome injuries, including small headless bodies, are just too horrendous to show," reporter Chris Brown said.

Lahav accused CBC of having "completely erased" the horrors of Oct. 7.
'People Only See What the Media Shows': Nir Oz Spox Still Fighting To Tell Real Story of Oct. 7



'Don't forget me. I'll meet you in the Garden of Eden': The heartbreaking words of Nova festival survivor to dead husband as she joins families at October 7 massacre site one year on
'I had to come here today to close a chapter,' says Nova survivor Yovel Sharvit Trabelsi from the site of the massacre.

The 27-year-old returned to Re'im for the first time today since the love of her life was shot dead in front of her eyes here - exactly one month after their wedding day.

She was trapped under his body for five hours, forced to listen as terrorists raped a woman and executed her metres away.

Yovel was left so traumatised she was unable to get out of bed, but she made a promise to her late husband that she would become a 'lioness' for him – just as he wanted.

As part of her quest she put on a powerful display at a fashion show for Nova survivors last year covered by the Daily Mail.

Our images went round the world showing her with a bullet wound in her head, symbolising the death of her husband, and a dress covered in hands as reference to the rape.

Now, a year on from that awful day, she returned to the scene of the massacre as part of her 'rebirth'.

'It all came back to me today,' she told the Daily Mail. 'I remembered all the roads as I drove in – how we were in the car, laughing, listening to music.'

Yovel had married Mor Meir Trabelsi, 27, exactly one month before in a huge ceremony 'full of love and happiness'. 'In retrospect, our wedding party was a farewell party for Mor,' she says.

Minutes after arriving at the Nova festival, Hamas gunmen stormed the venue. Mor desperately tried to drive them to safety, but he was shot in the head and killed instantly.

The car rolled over and smashed into the ditch, landing upside down – and sending his lifeless body on top of Yovel, trapping her underneath.

Here she sat, silently, hugging Mor's corpse for five hours. Yovel took his blood and wiped it on herself to play dead.

She listened helplessly as female hostages were dragged into Gaza, screaming out for help.


Vandals 'decapitate' Lady in Red mural depicting iconic October 7 survivor on one-year anniversary of Hamas massacre: Mother pictured fleeing festival reveals her 'biggest regret'
Vandals have 'decapitated' a mural depicting the iconic October 7 survivor the Lady in Red.

The mural depicted Vlada Patapov who became known as the 'Lady in Red' after she was pictured fleeing in terror as Hamas gunmen stormed the Nova music festival slaughtering more than 360 revellers and taking 40 people hostage.

But the artwork was vandalised on Monday, October 7, one year since the horrific Hamas terrorist attack which killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage.

They scraped off the Lady in Red's head and legs from the mural, which was located near Milan's state university.

The artist who created it, AleXsandro Palombo, said in a statement whoever 'decapitated' the image is not fighting for the liberation of Palestine.


The Free Press: SCOOP: CBS Punishes Anchor for Questioning Anti-Israel Author, Kamala on Call Her Daddy & More
Today on The Free Press Live: Bari Weiss discusses the leaked audio—obtained exclusively by The Free Press—from a CBS editorial meeting in which journalist Tony Dokoupil was admonished for asking tough questions in his interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Read more: https://www.thefp.com/p/cbs-marks-oct...

Michael and Batya also react to Kamala Harris’s recent interviews on 60 Minutes and Call Her Daddy. Haviv Rettig Gur calls in from Israel to discuss the anniversary of October 7. And Free Press reporter Joe Nocera will share his recent story on how Starlink stepped in to help Hurricane Helene victims where FEMA failed.




Elizabeth Warren Uses Oct. 7 Anniversary To Accuse Netanyahu of 'Unthinkable Violence on Innocent Civilians'
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) used the anniversary of Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel to accuse Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "unleash[ing] unthinkable violence on innocent civilians in Gaza."

"We must bring these hostages home. Instead of securing the release of the hostages, however, Prime Minister Netanyahu has unleashed unthinkable violence on innocent civilians in Gaza," Warren wrote in a Monday statement. "We urgently need a ceasefire, release of the hostages, massive humanitarian relief in Gaza, and diplomatic efforts towards a two-state solution."

The statement is the latest in a string of criticisms Warren has directed at Israel and Netanyahu since the Israel-Hamas war broke out a year ago following Hamas’s terrorist attack, which killed over 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages in southern Israel.

In April, Warren said there was "ample evidence" that Israel’s operations in Gaza constituted a "genocide." Warren also boycotted Netanyahu’s address to Congress this summer, calling the speech a "political show."

"Violence is escalating throughout the region, including most recently in Lebanon, threatening even more human suffering," Warren said in her Monday statement, acknowledging that "Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks."

"This cycle of violence won’t make anyone safer," the Massachusetts progressive continued. "The United States must commit to upholding human rights, international law, and accountability for the use of U.S. weapons."

Netanyahu, during his September speech at the United Nations, slammed "self-described progressives" for choosing to "march against the democracy of Israel" and supporting the "Iranian-backed goons in Tehran who gunned down protesters, murdered women for not covering their hair, and hang gays in public squares."


Pittsburgh Dems slammed for ‘antisemitic’ statement blaming Israel for Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre
On the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, Pittsburgh’s Jewish community mourned the victims. Their politicians were busy mourning the Palestinians — and blaming Israel for the terrorist attack.

Rep. Summer Lee, Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato issued a joint Twitter statement saying they have “hearts big enough to grieve those killed one year ago and those massacred in the year since.”

“Our grief is compounded by the fact that it didn’t have to be this way,” they went on. “This violence did not start on October 7.”

Pittsburgh’s Jewish leaders read the statement loud and clear.

“This warped and deliberate weaponization of language can only be interpreted as a way to undermine the Israeli and Jewish victims of October 7,” the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh responded, adding the pols “place the blame on the victims of October 7: Israel and its people.”

“It displays a stunning lack of sensitivity that veers into antisemitic territory,” Rabbi Seth Adelson of Beth Shalom Synagogue told The Post. “I’m just baffled that they thought on this day that could have been received well.”

Adelson admitted his mind was elsewhere: His son had just deployed to northern Israel to fight Hezbollah in a war that began with another terrorist group on Israel’s southern border.

One year ago, Hamas terrorists murdered, raped, beheaded and kidnapped more than 1,400 people, including more than 40 Americans. Hamas is still holding 97 people hostage.

But Pittsburgh’s political leaders did not mention Hamas, nor “that Israel is fighting a just war for her survival,” Adelson said while gripping his guitar, which he had just played for an audience of more than 1,200 people.


Anti-Israel Group 'Abandon Harris' Endorses Green Party Candidate Jill Stein
The anti-Israel organization "Abandon Harris," which seeks "to ensure the defeat" of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, citing her support for Israel, endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president.

"Our movement remains dedicated to ensuring that the American people, especially the Muslim-American community, recognize the responsibility we share in standing up against oppression and using all our power to stop genocide—wherever it may arise. On the precipice of the election, we endorse Jill Stein," the group wrote in a press release Monday.

"Abandon Harris"—formerly "Abandon Biden"—demands a "permanent and unconditional ceasefire" and "a full arms embargo against the state of Israel," according to the group’s website.

Stein, who has said she would end all military support to Israel if elected, is not expected to earn much of the vote this fall but could draw votes from Harris in swing states, the Hill reported. A September survey had Stein polling at just 1 percent in key battleground states, but Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump remain in a tight race in which a small number of votes could tip the scales.

Stein ran unsuccessfully for the White House in 2012 and 2016, during which she faced criticism for being a spoiler in Hillary Clinton's campaign against Donald Trump.

The "Abandon Harris" group’s endorsement comes as Harris struggles to regain the support of Arab-American voters, who were historically Democratic voters before the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Last month, the anti-Israel Uncommitted National Movement also declined to endorse the vice president, and according to an Arab American Institute survey, Harris is trailing Donald Trump 46 percent to 42 percent among likely Arab Americans.

In its Monday statement, the group said it’s "confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it," referring to Harris and Trump, respectively.

Harris, who articulated her support for Israel, also stressed the suffering in Gaza in a Monday statement.

"It is far past time for a hostage and ceasefire deal to end the suffering of innocent people," Harris said on Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that sparked the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. "And I will always fight for the Palestinian people to be able to realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination."

The "Abandon Harris" campaign’s objective is "to ensure that Kamala Harris loses the swing states," their website states.
61% of US Jews surveyed feel less safe after Oct. 7
Research suggests that as crime targeting Jews has risen, the community’s trust in law enforcement has dropped, according to a study released on Monday by the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

The 40-page study presented the results of a survey of 1,075 American Jews between Aug. 12 and Sept. 3. Questions focused on experiences of antisemitism following the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Answers suggest that 3.5 million American Jews have personally encountered antisemitism since then and that 61% feel less safe. This includes one-fifth of Jewish children experiencing incidents of bigotry.

Among Jewish adults, 25% report seeing antisemitism in their area—a doubling from previous reports—and 25% of those affiliated with synagogues say theirs has been targeted with graffiti, threats or attacks.

The survey suggests an increase in those physically threatened or attacked in the past year, increasing slightly to 7% from 5% in a 2020 Pew poll. This accounts for 406,000 adult Jews. Of these individuals, an estimated 290,000 said the encounter involved physical contact, and only 21% reported the crime to police.

Coupled with the uptick in hate crimes, Jews surveyed show a diminished faith in law enforcement with 75% of those victimized by antisemitism not reporting incidents to anyone outside their family. Only 46% of Jews regard the police as somewhat or very effective, a drop from previous research.

The survey also confirmed fears of intimidation at colleges throughout the United States. For Jewish students surveyed, 39% felt uncomfortable or unsafe at a campus event due to their Jewish identity, while 29% felt or have been excluded from a group or an event on campus because of their religion.

These results also affect Jewish voting decisions, with 43% of those surveyed saying it would influence their choice come November.

“The explosion of anti-Jewish hate since Oct. 7 in this country has profoundly impacted individuals, families and communities,” said Misha Galperin, a member of CAM’s board of governors. “The extent of that impact on American Jews documented by this survey is simply stunning.”
Listen to What They’re Chanting
One slogan, however, has become emblematic of the debate over the possible anti-Semitic content of pro-Palestinian chants. Its stature can be attributed, in part, to Republican Representative Elise Stefanik, who infamously insisted, during hearings on campus anti-Semitism, that it amounted to a call for genocide. The slogan, of course, is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Israel’s supporters hear it as eliminationist: From the Jordan to the Mediterranean, which is to say, across the land that had been under British control before it was partitioned by the United Nations in 1947, Palestine will be free of Jews. Where are they supposed to go? Many Jews find the possible answers to that question very disturbing. Palestinians and their allies, however, reject the Jewish interpretation as a form of catastrophizing. They say that the chant expresses the dream of a single, secular, democratic nation in which Palestinians and Jews would live peacefully side by side, in lieu of the existing Jewish ethno-nationalist state. (It is hard to dispute that in this scenario, Jewish Israelis would lose the power of collective self-determination.)

Before “From the river to the sea” caught on in English, it was chanted in Arabic. It is not clear when it first came into use, but Elliott Colla, a scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown University, believes that it emerged during the First Intifada—or rather, two versions of it did. One was nationalist: “Min al-maiyeh lel mayieh, Falasteen Arabiya”: “From water to water, Palestine is Arab.” The other was Islamist: “Falasteen Islamiyyeh, min al-nahr ila al-bahr”: “Palestine is Islamic from the river to the sea.” At some point during the Oslo peace process, Colla says, a third chant appeared: “Min al-nahr ila al-bahr, Falasteen satataharrar,” or “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” “It is this version—with its focus on freedom—that has circulated within English-language solidarity culture from at least the 1990s,” Colla writes in a recent article.

Therefore, Colla writes, “Palestine will be free” should be considered a new chant expressing the ideal of a more inclusive state, not merely a translation of the older, more aggressive chants. It gives voice to a “much more capacious vision of a shared political project.” The problem with Colla’s benign reading of the slogan, however, is that the more nationalist or Islamist Arab-language chants are still in circulation; they share airtime with the English-language variant at American protests. In January, I started seeing videos of American students chanting “Min al-maiyeh lel mayieh, Falasteen Arabiya.” The menace implicit in the Arabic chant bleeds into the English-language version.

If a chant’s meaning changes according to the other ones being chanted at the same event, the signs being waved, the leader’s general affect, and so on, then today’s chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are not beautiful messages of peace. A voice breaking the calm of a neoclassical quad with harsh cries of “Intifada, Intifada” is not a harbinger of harmonious coexistence. “We don’t want two states! We want all of it!” seems especially uncompromising when sung next to snow that’s been stained blood-red with paint. (I imagine that the red snow was meant to allude to the blood of Gazans, but sometimes a symbol means more than it is intended to mean.) Student protesters often say that all they want is for the killing to stop. That may well be true. But that is not what they’re chanting, or how they’re chanting it.


Columbia Student Group Apologizes—for Apologizing on Behalf of Member Who Fantasized About 'Murdering Zionists'
The Columbia University student group behind the school's illegal anti-Israel encampment published a letter apologizing for its past treatment of Khymani James, a member of the group who infamously fantasized about "murdering Zionists." Though the group issued a statement months ago distancing itself from James's words, it now says that statement caused James "irrevocable harm" and exposed him "to even more hatred from white supremacist and queerphobic liberals and fascists."

When video of James's remarks surfaced in April—James said "Zionists don't deserve to live" and argued that Columbia officials should be "grateful that I'm not just going out there and murdering Zionists"—Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted a brief, now-deleted statement to social media saying his words "do not reflect our values, nor the encampment's community agreements." Now the group is apologizing for doing so, saying the statement played into "the media and the public's neo-liberal co-optation of our encampments and our movement for Palestinian liberation."

"By issuing a so-called 'apology,' CUAD exposed Khymani to even more hatred from white supremacist and queerphobic liberals and fascists, along with the neo-liberal media," the group wrote in its Tuesday letter, which it published to Telegram. "And for that, we sincerely apologize and will continue working towards holding ourselves accountable by keeping true to our political lines, learning in public, refusing to treat one another as disposable, and not bending to neo-liberal media."

"We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance," the letter continues. "When you fight back against state violence, you're criminalized and isolated, as Khymani was." CUAD goes on to echo "decolonial thinkers and revolutionaries like Frantz Fanon and Fidel Castro," arguing that "violence is the only path forward."

James shared the letter to his X followers on Tuesday afternoon, thanking his "comrades" for their "beautiful, powerful" words. He said he "never wrote" the apology he posted in April and is "glad we've set the record straight once and for all."

"I will not allow anyone to shame me for my politics," he wrote. "Anything I said, I meant it." James went on to quote the portion of the letter that endorses violence as "the only path forward," writing, "I couldn't agree more. Long live Palestine, the Intifada, and the Resistance."
'Resistance Is Justified': Columbia Students Celebrate Oct. 7 as Pro-Hamas Demonstration Turns Violent in NYC
Hundreds of Columbia University students celebrated the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack by surrounding pro-Israel students and shouting "resistance is justified." They later joined in with a larger protest, organized by an anti-Semitic group, where agitators bloodied an Israel supporter, smashed a car window, and sported Hamas headbands.

The day started with a group of pro-Israel supporters gathered outside Columbia’s gates in remembrance of the terrorist attack. They chanted "Bring them home," sang "The Star-Spangled Banner," and held posters showing photos of hostages captured by Hamas.

But anti-Israel students soon overwhelmed the several dozen supporters of the Jewish state, marching and chanting "one solution" while holding Palestinian flags and dancing to "I believe that we will win" chants.

The agitators made their way to the New York Stock Exchange and joined up with protesters affiliated with Within Our Lifetime, a notoriously anti-Semitic group. Its founder, Nerdeen Kiswani, has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and repeatedly praised Hamas. She has also addressed Columbia students before, both as one of the featured speakers at the pro-terror "Palestinian Resistance 101" event held on campus in March and as an unauthorized guest of the illegal encampment that plagued the school shortly thereafter.

Demonstrators kicked off the larger protest by unfurling a massive Palestinian flag. Keffiyehs were prominent in the crowd. Flags for Hezbollah, Iran, and Samidoun—an Israeli-designated terrorist organization—were also spotted.

Several protesters surrounded and attacked Democratic Majority for Israel co-chair Todd Richman, bloodying his nose. One struck him with a tambourine and another ripped away his Israeli flag. Afterward, they burned a cardboard effigy of a pig.


Fury as school principal bans Israeli flag and yellow ribbon hostage tributes - but says Palestinian keffiyehs are fine
A New Jersey high school has been accused of 'blatant anti-Semitism' for banning yellow ribbons in honor of the Israeli hostages while allowing the keffiyeh to be displayed.

Wednesday's incident at Fair Lawn High School in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, saw a Jewish Student Union club table at a fair ordered to remove the ribbons.

An Israeli flag on the same table was also removed at a school leader's request. The school's Muslim club table - which was sitting next to the Jewish Student Union table - was allowed to keep a keffiyeh on display.

Parent Dr. Adi Vaxman was outraged when she learned of the incident last Tuesday - hours before the Jewish new year Rosh Hoshana celebrations.

'The assistant principal [Dr. Steffany Baptiste- Bosco] told the students who were manning the table that unless it was childhood cancer the yellow ribbon was considered political and they are not allowed to display it.
Northwestern University quietly ends relationship with anti-Israel media outlet Al Jazeera
Northwestern University has cut its ties to a controversial Qatari news group, Campus Reform recently learned.

A Northwestern spokesperson told Campus Reform that the school ended its Memorandum of Understanding with Al Jazeera in July.

Northwestern has previously faced criticism for its ties to Qatar and Al Jazeera, which has been called “the voice of Qatar’s regime.” The Illinois university has a branch in Qatar that signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Al Jazeera in 2013 “to better understand and develop media in Qatar and the region.”

“The agreement, which deepens ties between the two organizations that have worked together since NU-Q’s inception, will allow professionals and budding journalists from both sides to benefit from the combined expertise of the two institutions through joint research and strategic studies projects, training workshops, a co-designed lecture series, internships and faculty contributions as well as journalist-exchange programs,” Northwestern’s press release announcing the agreement said at the time.

The Coalition Against Anti-Semitism at Northwestern (CAAN), a group of Northwestern community members, alumni, and allies working to fight anti-Semitism, released a report in May, which was obtained by Campus Reform, calling on the Illinois-based university to cut its ties with both Al Jazeera and Qatar.

The report found that Al Jazeera “quite clearly betrays basic standards of journalism by being the sanctioned and singular voice on behalf of its government, in clear alignment with Qatar’s national priorities and interests.”

“Northwestern should do so not only for the moral reason that it is aiding and abetting the mouthpiece of Hamas, thereby endangering Israelis as victims of Hamas atrocities and Gazan civilians who are cynically used as human shields,” the report continued.

CAAN noted that “Northwestern is also endangering journalists around the world who may have their credentials questioned by less humane governments than Israel because of the way Hamas uses journalists as a cover.”


Israeli-American scientist, who won top US research prize, credits her Jewish identity for her resilience
Cigall Kadoch was inspired to become a medical researcher as a teenager when her caretaker, whom she saw as a mentor, got sick and died suddenly.

“She played a huge role in our lives, and she was the only person my parents trusted,” Kadoch, associate professor of pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, told JNS. “Around when I was bat mitzvah age, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away within a few months in front of our eyes.”

Kadoch struggled to understand and process what was happening.

“I was frustrated because I was told I was smart but I didn’t have an explanation for what claimed her life. It was like an accident or a fire,” she told JNS. “This was something within the human body that I couldn’t explain or find answers for because they weren’t in textbooks yet.”

Kadoch, 39, was also confused when she shadowed a family member, who worked with cancer patients, at a clinic.

“I would watch him treat patients, but I couldn’t understand why some got better and others died,” she said. “I asked him why some cancers respond to treatments and others don’t and he couldn’t answer me, so I thought I would become medically trained as a way to understand.”

Kadoch not only trained as a medical researcher—in college at the University of California, Berkeley and then a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford School of Medicine—but after establishing her own lab, at age 28, in 2014, she is “one of the youngest scientists ever appointed to the Harvard Medical School faculty,” per her Dana-Farber bio.

Last month, she landed one of the most prestigious scientific awards in the United States, the 2024 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. She credits much of her success, and her outlook, to her Jewish identity.




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