Friday, October 11, 2024

10/11 Links Pt2: 365 Days of October 7; The creepy thought experiments of Ta-Nehisi Coates; BBC Iranian expert who ranted about ‘chosen people’ pictured in IRGC uniform

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Jewish Moment
It’s the same environment in which the deranged hatred of Israel and the Jewish people in the general population has become mainstream and is overwhelming the culture.

This is obviously very frightening. However, it’s important for Jews to view these tumultuous events not through corrupted Western eyes, which peer through a prism of demoralization and despair, but through Jewish eyes, which gaze through a prism of clarity and hope.

We Jews are not alone. There are good people who support us. They are people who still understand the distinction between right and wrong, truth and lies, victim and victimizer.

Although there are millions of them, they don’t possess cultural and political power. They have been effectively disenfranchised by those who aim to destroy Western civilization, who despise Israel and the Jews, and who dominate the elite positions within Western society.

With the decent millions fighting back through the democratic avenues available to them, a titanic civilizational struggle is under way.

The Jews are the leaders of that resistance. Israel is leading it in geopolitical and military terms, fighting to defeat the forces of evil in Iran and the Islamic world.

More generally, the historic culture of the Jewish people reaffirms the core values of civilization against the forces upholding lies, hatred and the abuse of power.

Those forces are embedded within the left-wing establishment in every country. In the Diaspora, many Jews themselves are signed up to the ideologies that have unleashed them. Some of these Jews have been deeply dismayed since Oct. 7 to find their supposed fellow “progressives” have turned against them.

These Jews have a choice. They can recognize the unique value of the inherited, specific precepts of Judaism that have bound the Jewish people together over the centuries and enabled it to survive every culture that has tried to annihilate it. Or else they can stick with a Western culture which, unless it dramatically changes course, is going down.

This weekend is Yom Kippur. Rarely has its central theme of teshuvah—“return”—seemed more apposite.

In the Middle East, the enemies of the Jewish people are now on the back foot. In Israel, there’s a quiet certainty that we are winning.

More than that, it’s astounding that this tiny country is standing alone to defend civilization against barbarism—a service to humanity that it’s delivering on behalf of the entire world.

No one is under any illusion. Many perils and maybe even more suffering lie ahead. What’s certain, however, is that Israel and the Jewish people will survive and thrive.

As Poilievre so movingly declared: “One thing I know—even a thousand years from now, on Friday as the sun sets and Shabbat begins in Israel, the songs of Shabbat will continue to be heard, and the Jewish people will continue to exist.”

We are living through a seismic chapter in Jewish destiny. The world may rage and shout and scream—because they know it, too. This is the Jewish moment.
The New Zionist Renaissance
The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent “Iron Swords” war have thrust profound philosophical and political questions to the forefront that will in turn shape the future of Zionism and with it, the fate of the Jewish people. What role should the State of Israel play in the life of the Jewish people? What is the meaning of Jewish consciousness in the life of the individual? What historical lessons should be learned from the events of the past year that might help ensure the survival of the Jewish nation?

Grappling with these questions has yielded an unequivocal conclusion: a resurgence of the relevance of the “Zionist idea” in the 21st century, both in Israel and in the diaspora.

Since the dawn of the Jewish emancipation in the 18th century, the Jewish people have wrestled with the question of their collective fate. Some argued that Jews should strive for full cultural integration into non-Jewish society, while abandoning religious, social, and cultural traditions and instead adopting the customs of the host countries. Conversely, others contended that one should not trust foreign societies or rely on the aid of host nations during times of crisis. According to this view, the Jewish people should direct most of their resources and efforts toward building internal Jewish resilience—culturally and politically. After the Holocaust, this debate was largely settled by the comprehensive vision of Zionism.

In addressing the distress among the Jews of Eastern Europe, and assimilation in the West, the Zionist movement sought to revitalize the Jewish people economically, socially, and most of all, politically and culturally. It aimed to ensure the continuity of an autonomous Jewish life through the ingathering of Jews to their ancestral homeland and the establishment of an independent sociopolitical base that would secure their existence, security, and well-being. Otherwise, assimilation within host societies and persecution from without would lead to their physical and spiritual destruction.

The Holocaust proved the prescience of the Zionist prognosis, at least regarding physical existence in the diaspora, in such a definitive manner that even its most ardent proponents could not have dared to imagine. It became evident that the Jewish people could not count on help or shelter from other nations, but must rely solely on an independent army and state.

In the ensuing decades, as Jews integrated into Western society alongside the establishment of the State of Israel, these hard-learned truths began to fade. Many came to believe that this existential diagnosis was a relic of the past with no relevance to contemporary reality. Senior political and security figures, both from within the Israeli establishment and the international community, exerted significant influence on decision-makers in Jerusalem to rely on international guarantees for existential issues concerning security and well-being.

The attacks of Oct. 7 have once again thrown into stark relief the “normal” historical condition of the Jews throughout history, including now. The attacks did not uncover unknown facts. However, only after their occurrence did these facts transform from abstract concepts into a bitter reality that could no longer be ignored. For many Israelis, Oct. 7 catalyzed an experiential and ideological shift in their fundamental beliefs, leading back to the Zionist idea.
Andrew Fox: Reflections on a week of remembrance
Dear all,
The subtitle of this piece might be misleading, but I’m going with it. This letter isn’t just to the new friends I’ve made this past year, both Jews in the UK and people in Israel. It’s also to my non-Jewish readers who may wonder why I have been quite as vociferous as I have over the last year, on a topic where I don’t really have a dog in the fight.

It starts, as do all acts of remembrance this week, on 7th October last year. I’m a former Army officer; my academic areas of interest were (and are) strategy in the Middle East, and the psychology of disinformation. So when a war began in the Middle East that raised many strategic questions, whilst soaked in the patterns of disinformation I know intimately from my studies… well, I had something to say.

Of course I knew of the events of 7th October: I’m a Middle East researcher. On the day itself, the Telegram channels I follow were writhing like a bag of snakes with snuff movie after snuff movie. All so abhorrent; all so shocking; even for a reasonably experienced soldier.

My early strategic analysis was about right. I guessed Israel’s strategic goals and I looked at their tactics, and felt they all looked logical. They fought a contested urban battle against a dug-in defence in pretty much the same way British Army doctrine advises. Isolation; break-in; seize objectives; clearance.

Obviously, the isolation and break-in phases to Gaza City drew the world’s ire. The global public was unprepared for the live-streaming of the effects of modern weaponry in an urban setting. The closest most people have come to it is Call of Duty. They were primed on decades of Palestinian information operations about Israel, and swam in a rising sea of antisemitism. They didn’t understand what 7th October meant and why Israel had to respond the way it did. When Hamas’ ringmasters presented them with a narrative of genocide that fit their prejudices and biases, they clung to it with both hands.

Israel’s great mistake was in assuming that the horrors of 7th October would buy them some credit. They wildly overestimated their bank balances of sympathy, and as victims of disinformation fraud they rapidly became overdrawn.

So, there was I, in my Twitter/X stovepipe, merrily analysing away in broad support of Israel’s strategy. Until April 2024.

I was invited on a trip to Israel by the Military Expert Panel. We were granted decent access by the IDF and they briefed us their plans, which I noted smugly were just about what I’d predicted. Situation: no change.

What changed everything for me was visiting the massacre sites and seeing those hurt by it: victims and hostage family members. I wasn’t prepared for it conceptually or emotionally. It turned those snuff films of months earlier into 3-D.

Before, it was just another set of horrors in a world full of horrors, of which I had seen my fair share firsthand.

After, it was a lurid kaleidoscope of pain, misery, inhuman rape and torture; sadism, dehumanisation, and bloody, mutilating murder of the utmost savagery, carried out with Satanic glee. I walked in human ashes mixed with the remnants of the fires in kibbutzim where innocents were burned alive. I have seen the evidence of rape. I have seen the sites of these obscenities against humanity.

Before, I knew. After, I understood.
John Podhoretz: Antisemitism's Rise after Oct. 7 Should Scare Us All
A new study released on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel finds that 3.5 million American Jews say they have experienced some form of antisemitism in the year since.

The study by the National Opinion Research Council at the University of Chicago found that a quarter of Jewish respondents avoid displaying their Jewish identity in the workplace, an increase of 33% over the past year.

A quarter of those affiliated with a synagogue or other Jewish institution "report that their institution has been targeted with graffiti, threats, or attacks since Oct. 7."

At universities, 39% of Jewish students report they have felt uncomfortable or unsafe at a campus event due to their identity, while 29% have felt or been excluded from a group or event because they are Jewish.

We Jews don't just feel like we're in danger. We are in danger.


Eitan Fischberger: 365 Days of October 7
How do you commemorate something still unfolding? That question looms large today, on the 365th day since October 7, as we grapple with the brutal reality of a world irrevocably changed. How do we honor the lives lost on that terrible day and in the ensuing war for Israel’s survival, while also committing to build a future defined not by tragedy but by strength and resilience? We might never find a satisfactory answer. But to begin our search for one, we must recognize that the struggle spans both physical and ideological battlefields.

First is the literal battlefield. The horrific attack by Hamas on October 7 was not just a terrorist assault; it was an attempt to break the spirit of a nation, to humiliate and destroy it. That day will be forever etched into our collective memory, a deep national wound. But out of that darkness, and perhaps because of it, Israel has risen with a fierce resolve, fighting an existential war that has now spread far beyond its original borders, as the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies besiege the Jewish state from all sides. Read more of our October 7 coverage.

And yet, the tragedy of October 7 has been followed by victories that nobody could have imagined. Hamas, whose brutality knows no bounds, is now on its knees. Hezbollah, until last week viewed as an existential threat to Israel, has been defeated in what will inevitably be viewed as the most jaw-dropping counterterrorism campaign in history. The targeted killings of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran serve as a stark warning to the Grand Ayatollah that nowhere, not even within the heart of Iran, is safe.

But victory on the battlefield is only one part of the fight. The international community, the Biden–Harris administration, and various European governments will undoubtedly increase pressure even further on Israel to relent and seek a ceasefire with those who would sacrifice nearly everything to destroy it. But in the face of such evil—especially one that seeks to overthrow Western civilization, as well—one must show no signs of weakness. As Andrew Klavan so aptly put it: “I just hope Israel can save Western civilization before Western civilization can stop them.”
Yisrael Medad: Who must share responsibility for the events of Oct. 7?
The former head of the Mossad, Uzi Arad, was very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu in an Oct. 4 interview with Shira Rubin of The Washington Post. Netanyahu, he said, “championed a radical reconceptualization of Israel’s approach to Hamas.” It was a strategy of “containment that relied on shoring up the group’s government in Gaza with financial support from intermediaries while keeping its military capabilities in check with occasional bombing campaigns.” Arad, however, is of the opinion that “it was self-delusion. And there wasn’t anyone who challenged it.”

Conceptualizations have been the bane of Israel’s security failures before, most notably regarding the 1973 Yom Kippur War. That debacle, at least, was one in which the government was convinced a full day earlier that war would break out, unlike Netanyahu’s cabinet. Whereas Israeli premier Golda Meir and her ministers decided not to act preemptively on the information available to them and based on army intelligence, Netanyahu was not even woken up to digest the incoming reports or given a chance to make a wrong—or correct—decision until 6:29 a.m. on the day Hamas crossed the border.

Journalistic investigations into the debacle of the performance of the Israel Defense Forces leading up to Oct. 7, including lack of reinforced shelters and arms training, as well as the near-total collapse of any effective organized defense action until well after midday by the IDF, make for painful reading. Even if Israel’s governments preferred to simply contain Hamas—and worse, allowing themselves to be convinced that Hamas was deterred—it is the army’s responsibility, at the very least, to be prepared to confront attacks.

No one in the IDF, in the Mossad, in the GSS thought to alert the prime minister of a possible dangerous development in Israel’s south. Even Maj. Gen Aharon Haliva, now retired, the former commander of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, slept through the night while other commanders discussed and debated the situation.

The most senior commanders, in the two previous years, had either ignored or suppressed indications of a change in Hamas strategy from the field spotters. Herzi Halevi, appointed as IDF Chief of Staff by Benny Gantz (over protests that were ignored by the State Attorney General, appointed by Gantz’s government on the recommendation of Gideon Sa’ar) was previously the commander of the Israeli Southern Command, responsible for Gaza, and before that, the chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate. It would appear that the IDF’s role in the debacle is not incidental. One decision was to remove rifles from the members of the emergency intervention teams of the communities. Another was to close the Open Source Intelligence unit and merge it, making it less effective.

The army, however, was only part of the problem of a wrong and misguided conceptualization. The political echelons over the years contributed to the willingness of the senior command to dismiss or minimize the threat that Hamas represented.
New book draws line from 1929 Hebron Massacre to horrific events of October 7
A large part of “Ghosts of a Holy War” is a review of Israeli and Palestinian history from the British Mandate through the 1967 Six Day War, as well as an explanation of the holy significance of Hebron for both Jews and Muslims.

The book’s other sections are more interesting for those already familiar with this material. These include the birth and growth of the radical Israeli settler movement in Hebron, the descriptions of the separation of Israelis and Palestinians in today’s Hebron, the militarized nature of the city’s Israeli-controlled zones, and their impact on everyday Palestinians.

Schwartz, an American who lived in Israel from 2013 to 2023, first visited Hebron as a Columbia University journalism student in 2011.

“It was the first time I saw the consequences of the occupation of the West Bank up close… I saw how Palestinians walk the streets [of areas of Hebron held by Israel] with their heads down because there are soldiers at every corner… I imagined how they would feel… It struck me that I, as a graduate student from New York, had more freedom to walk on these streets than they did,” Schwartz said.

“This place that is so holy had become just this giant military base and I didn’t feel any of the spirituality and sanctity of the place, which was tragic,” she said.

The author’s hundreds of hours of reporting in Hebron between 2019 and 2023 reveal both sides of the narrative. On the one hand, there are her conversations with ultranationalist settlers such as Baruch Marzel and others who revere Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 carried out a massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, killing 29 Muslim worshipers and wounding 125.

Conversely, she speaks at length with Palestinians in Hebron who deny the Jews’ connection to Judaism’s second holiest city. They tell her that Jews never lived there as good neighbors with Muslims for centuries and that the 1929 massacre never occurred.

“I remember how utterly shocked I was to hear these denials of Jewish history and the massacre. And yet, today, in our new reality, these denials are everywhere. They’re not just coming from extremist Palestinians in Hebron, but also from Columbia [University] students — Western, white, privileged children — denying history and insisting that Jews are [foreign colonialists],” Schwartz said.

“Ghosts of a Holy War” ends with October 7 and its aftermath and ongoing repercussions. It also circles back to the memory of David Shainberg. He, like 24 other victims that day, was a Hebron Yeshiva student.

Uninterested in assimilationist American Jewish life or Zionism, Shainberg was unusual for his time. He sought a simple, spiritual life of Torah study and teaching in the Holy Land. He planned to bring his fiancee over from New York, marry her, and raise a family.

Shainberg lived nearly a year in Hebron before his murder. He wrote home about Muslim authorities preventing Jews from praying at the Western Wall and spreading lies about the Jews wanting to destroy Al-Aqsa to build a Third Temple.

Like the October 7 victims a mere day before their deaths, he had no idea this weaponized hate would imminently wipe him out.

Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Yardena Schwart
The Plot to Sabotage October 7 Commemorations
Here, on a grassy knoll called McKeldin Mall, at the University of Maryland, a lone figure with a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh over her shoulders slipped quietly through a crowd of about 200 students gathered for an “interfaith vigil” on the anniversary of the brutal October 7th massacre of Israeli Jews and others by Hamas militants.

“Zainab?” I asked, recognizing her immediately.

She turned around, lifted her eyeglasses from the bridge of her nose, and inspected me with a slow, deliberate once-over, there, near the intersection of Regents Drive and Chapel Lane.

As I identified myself to her, she responded with a curt, “I have no comment,” snapping her glasses back into place and gliding away like a ringmaster commanding this stage of protest theater—unbothered.

Of course, the bespectacled woman and the organization she represents—the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR—have had a lot to say since the massacre of Jews on October 7.

She was Zainab Chaudry, the director for the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and it was her organization that won a federal court ruling in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, granting the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine the right to host its “interfaith vigil” at the University of Maryland on October 7, despite protests from Jewish students and groups who felt it was insensitive to choose that specific day.

Last December, her boss, Nihad Awad, the organization’s Palestinian American cofounder, even proudly stated that he was elated about the Oct. 7th attacks, telling a meeting of American Muslims for Palestine, “I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.” Even the New York Times published a headline that the “White House disavows” the remarks by the CAIR leader.

In town from Los Angeles, where she has been a clinical psychologist for 30 years specializing in the treatment of trauma, Orli Peter, a friend, absorbed the scene and was appalled.

“The fact that this demonstration was held on October 7th, the day of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, is purposeful,” said Orli, who started a nonprofit, Israel Healing Initiative, after the attacks last year to bring trauma treatments to Israeli and Arab survivors of the attacks. “And what it does is interrupt the grief of Jews around the world. It tries to steal attention from what was done,” she explained, referring to the massacre by Hamas terrorists.
Survey: 40% of U.S. Muslims Deny Oct. 7 Atrocities
One year after Hamas terrorists in Gaza invaded Israel, raping women and slaughtering more than 1,100 people, a new survey by the Heritage Foundation found that 39% of U.S. Muslims believe "Hamas did not commit murder and rape in Israel on Oct. 7," while 31% admitted that Hamas terrorists did commit such acts, and 30% said they don't know.

Among the general U.S. public, 64% said Hamas committed these crimes, while 7% said they did not.

43% of American Muslims said, "Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish homeland," while 33% said Israel has such a right. Among the general public, 66% said Israel has such a right, while 11% said it did not.
‘War’ by Woodward reports Biden angrily swearing at Netanyahu in past
Author and journalist Bob Woodward is out with a new book titled War, scheduled for release on Oct. 15.

The 448-page work chronicles the Biden administration’s handling of and challenges associated with Russia’s war with Ukraine; Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon; and how these foreign-policy quagmires might affect a successful Democratic outcome in the 2024 presidential election come November.

In it, Woodward writes that U.S. President Joe Biden said privately that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a “son of a bitch,” “a bad f****** guy” and “a f****** liar.”

He reported that Biden argued with Netanyahu behind the scenes about numerous combat-related issues. He specifically questioned the Israeli government’s focus on destroying Hamas before negotiating the release of hostages the terrorists dragged into the Gaza Strip after it crossed the border with southern Israel and massacred 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023.

Of a phone call in April, Woodward—long associated with his work for The Washington Post—writes that Biden asked Netanyahu: “What’s your strategy, man?” The prime minister responded that Israel needed to go into Rafah, in the southernmost part of Gaza and the suspected holdout of Hamas, prompting Biden to respond: “Bibi, you’ve got no strategy.”

When Iran fired more than 100 missiles at Israel later that month, Woodward says Biden discouraged Netanyahu from launching a counterattack, saying “take the win.”

Following an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on July 30 that killed Hamas military commander Fuad Shukr, Woodward writes that Biden yelled at Netanyahu over the phone, “Bibi, what the f***?”
Meet Kamala’s Palestinian Best Friend Who Changed Her Mind on Israel
“I say this as someone who’s known her since 1997: She’s trying,” Hala Hijazi assured a panel at an anti-Israel DNC event that once she was president, Kamala would crack down on Israel.

Hijazi, a Jordanian immigrant who has roots in Gaza, is close to Kamala and they both came up through the ranks together. The Muslim official and fundraiser had worked as a special assistant to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown whom she described as a “mentor”.

Hala Hijazi was there for all of Kamala’s races, raising money for her Senate campaign, promoting an event co-hosted by Willie Brown, and promising that one day Kamala would be in the White House. And she can be seen posing in 2004 at the Bimbo’s club with Kamala, who had just begun her political career as San Francisco’s DA, and Obama, running for Senate.

After obtaining American citizenship in 1994, the Muslim immigrant quickly began climbing the political ladder, working for Willie Brown, becoming a ‘human rights’ commissioner, and getting to know everyone in Democratic politics. Hijazi’s social media feed is decorated with photos of her posing with Bill Clinton, Hillary, Pelosi, the Obamas, and above all else, Kamala.

“I’ve raised over $12 million for the Democratic Party,” Hijazi boasted at the anti-Israel panel.

Along the way, Hijazi visited Saudi Arabia by invitation of the royal family, advocated for the Iran Deal, which allowed the Islamic terrorist state to develop its ballistic missile and nuclear program, and condemned efforts to stop Muslim terrorists from coming to America.

And repeatedly denounced the Jewish State. A 2012 Free Beacon article by Adam Kredo profiled Hijazi as an “Obama bundler”, while noting her frequent attacks on Israel.
Bernie Sanders and AOC Mark October 7 Anniversary with False Accusations Against Israel
One year to the day after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children — including 46 Americans — in southern Israel, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lashed out with false accusations at the Israeli government.

Sanders’ and AOC’s claims were hardly original — yet coming from two large voices on the left, they deserve a thorough dissection.

To their credit, both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez began their statements by condemning the October 7 massacre as an instance of terrorism — a word that American journalists increasingly refuse to use.

Unfortunately, both quickly pivoted to condemnations of Israel, and specifically its prime minister. According to Sanders, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government” has not just targeted Hamas, but “waged total war against the Palestinian people.”

Yet it is Sanders who apparently can’t distinguish Hamas from the general population of Gaza.

The Vermont senator says that the war (which was started by Hamas) has claimed 41,000 Palestinian lives — a figure produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, although Sanders does not mention the source.

Hamas’ reliance on data from unidentified sources is a serious problem, but the more salient point is that its roster of the dead includes thousands upon thousands of Hamas gunmen and soldiers — a point the Hamas ministry does not dispute.

The Israelis estimate there have been 17,000 enemy fighters killed in action. Yet Sanders draws no distinction. It would be like equating dead Al-Qaeda operatives with Afghan civilians during the war that was started by the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Unlike Hamas, Israel is honest about what’s happening in Gaza.

Israel does not pretend that the war claims no civilian lives. Prime Minister Netanyahu said in May that 16,000 people had perished. When Hamas operates out of hospitals, schools, mosques, and UN buildings, it ensures that civilians will suffer. Yet Sanders remains quiet on this point, too.


Rep. Summer Lee absent from Kamala Harris’ Pittsburgh rally
Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) was notably absent from a widely attended rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Pittsburgh on Thursday night, a couple of days after she was publicly rebuked by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) over a controversial joint statement marking the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks that also faced condemnation in the local Jewish community. Prior to the rally held in Lee’s district, which was headlined by former President Barack Obama, the freshman congresswoman privately faced resistance from Jewish leaders and other Democratic activists over her potential role in the event, according to sources. The fallout from her statement — which made no mention of Hamas and was accused of blaming Israel for the attacks — was apparent on Thursday evening as Lee was “passed over” for a speaking slot at the rally, said a Jewish activist familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous to discuss drama behind the scenes. There had been “internal brawls” in the hours leading up to the rally over Lee’s involvement, according to the activist, particularly after Casey had firmly denounced her statement as “insensitive” and “inappropriate.” On Thursday night, there “was absolutely no sight of” Lee at the rally, said a person who attended the event — where several elected officials took the stage before Obama. Among them was Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who also signed the statement with Lee and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamaroto.
Casey issues new rebuke of Summer Lee, but stops short of revoking endorsement
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) doubled down on Wednesday night on his condemnation of a statement issued by Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) and other Pittsburgh officials marking the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks that drew criticism from the city’s Jewish community, but stopped short of revoking his endorsement of his fellow Pennsylvania lawmaker.

Lee, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato issued a joint statement on Oct. 7 that did not mention Hamas and blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 attack and the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Casey condemned the missive in his own public statement.

Discussing Israel policy dynamics in the Democratic Party during a campaign event at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Pittsburgh on Wednesday, Casey criticized Lee by name.

“All this transpired in a way that was both insensitive, it was inappropriate and it was just dead wrong,” Casey said. “It was especially insensitive, inappropriate, because of when they issued the statement, and I categorically condemn that statement.”

He continued that he “categorically condemn[s]” the sentiment the Pittsburgh officials expressed “that somehow we have to just pull up stakes and try to make a deal … and Israel doesn’t have to continue to bring the fight to these threats that are impinging upon their security every day.”

He said he is pushing back against the spread of such sentiments and attitudes in the Democratic Party.

Pressed later, Casey did not explicitly revoke his endorsement of Lee.

“I think I’ve been pretty clear about condemning categorically what was said in that statement and condemning categorically hateful speech or speech that is antisemitic, and I stand on that record,” Casey said. “I think my record’s pretty clear.”

He said he didn’t want to “get involved in other races” and wanted to focus on his own Senate race. Casey’s Senate opponent, David McCormick, said it was “shameful” that Casey wouldn’t explicitly revoke his endorsement.

Addressing Israel’s still-pending response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack, Casey said the U.S. should back Israel responding how it sees fit.
Alsobrooks sidesteps debate question whether she’d be more like Cardin or Van Hollen on Israel
At the first and only Maryland Senate debate, held Thursday night, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks sidestepped a question on whether, as a senator, her position on Israel would be more aligned with retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), a stalwart backer of Israel, or Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who has emerged as one of the leading critics of the Jewish state in the Senate.

Alsobrooks, a Democrat, is running against former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan in the unusually competitive Senate race in the solidly-Democratic state.

“I’ve been really fortunate to have the support of both Sen. Van Hollen and Sen. Cardin, and we have a tremendous delegation who I’ve worked with over the years when it comes to this issue. I will be Angela Alsobrooks as a senator,” she said.

She later added that she would have attended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress, which Van Hollen skipped.

Hogan, the Republican former two-term governor, responded that he was “going to be a strong supporter of Israel, as I always have been. I’m going to be more like a champion for Israel like Ben Cardin, rather than trying to equivocate or do both side-isms or to follow Chris Van Hollen, who is probably the most anti-Israel member of the United States Senate.”

Alsobrooks further detailed her views on the Middle East: “Let me tell you what I believe: We recognize a horrific attack that occurred in Israel on Oct. 7, and I believe in this moment, we have an obligation to make sure that we’re getting those hostages home to their families, and that we get to a cease-fire, making sure as well that we get aid into Gaza for the Palestinians who are suffering. We’ve got to get to a two-state solution so that we have peace and security in Israel, peace, security and self-determination for the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Alsobrooks added that in the longer term, “Our multilateral relationships with UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan is going to be necessary for us to isolate Iran, to have the longterm sort of stability that we need. But I support Israel and support its right to defend itself, and I will continue to support that alliance.”


Brendan O'Neill: The creepy thought experiments of Ta-Nehisi Coates
I cannot believe this needs to be said in 2024, but there is no context in which killing innocent Jews becomes understandable. Everywhere one looks these days, people are ‘contextualising’ pogroms. Among the cranky online right there is a creepy new trend of excuse-making for the Nazis’ extermination of Europe’s Jews. And among the woke left, there’s a rush to provide context for Hamas’s butchery of 7 October. Gaza is hellish, they say. Its people are oppressed, they insist. As if any of that explains the rape of Jewish women or the hurling of hand grenades into Jewish children’s faces. No political grievance, not one, makes sense of Jew murder.

The most striking thing about Coates’s latest artless intervention into the discussion of Israel-Gaza is how he puts himself slap bang in the middle of it. Many of today’s moral relativists who masquerade as progressive thinkers have said, or at least implied, that 7 October was a prison-break by the persecuted, a revolt of the downtrodden. But Coates goes a step further. He wonders what he would do. He puts himself in the shoes of the pogromists. I’m all for empathy. But trying to get into the hearts and minds of the men who raped Jewish women and then shot them? Yeah, that’s where my empathy dries up.

Coates’s thought experiment speaks not only to the moral disarray of contemporary ‘progressive’ thought, but to its narcissism, too. As with his new book, The Message, which includes a long section on a trip he took to Israel and Palestine, Coates seems hell-bent on centring his own emotions and hang-ups. The entire wartorn Middle East is reduced to a therapist’s couch for a moneyed American trying to make sense of his own life experiences. His interest in the region seems little more than an extension of his own ceaseless self-reflection as the literary establishment’s anointed truth-teller on race.

So in The Message he likens Israel to ‘the Jim Crow South’ – a spectacularly historically illiterate claim that could only make sense to a man for whom America is the centre of the universe and whose own story is the only story that counts. He writes about ‘the glare of racism’ he felt in Israel. He describes one incident where he and his party were made to wait 45 minutes at a checkpoint outside Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. That’s it? How quickly his empathy evaporates when it comes to Israelis. How striking that the man who understands why a 20-year-old Gazan might join a fascistic pogrom seems incapable of understanding why a Jewish nation surrounded by hostile armies of anti-Semites might politely ask you to wait 45 poxy minutes before accessing a religious site.

Coates’s bending of the sorrows of the Middle East to his own petty agenda of grievance-mongering sums up what ‘Palestine’ has become for the 21st-century progressive. It has become a tool of vicarious victimhood, a means for the rich of the West to metaphorically mingle with the wretched of Gaza in the hope that some of their glow of suffering might rub off and add a little depth to these people’s identitarian complaining. When Coates says he felt the ‘glare of racism’ in Israel, and wonders what he would do if he were a downtrodden Gazan, he exposes the coveting of suffering that motors so-called Palestine solidarity. There’s an ironically neo-colonial vibe here, where a foreign nation is mined not for its resources or territory, but for that other most prized asset in the era of woke: the feeling of victimhood.

As to his confession that, in another life, he might not have been ‘strong enough’ to resist joining the rampage of 7 October – you couldn’t ask for better proof that pity for Palestine is a gateway drug to unhinged hatred for the Jewish nation. And that the modern politics of grievance teeters always on the brink of a politics of vengeance. Listen, if the end result of your ideology is wondering out loud about the circumstances under which you’d possibly join a pogrom, you need a new ideology.
The Ta-Nehisi Coates-CBS Debacle: A Case Study in Mainstream Media’s Spinelessness
In a seven-minute interview on September 30, CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil pressed author Ta-Nehisi Coates on the most contentious parts of his new essay collection, The Message, which tackles the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The fallout continues to reverberate, with Paramount Global’s CEO, Shari Redstone reportedly admitting that CBS’s decision to reprimand Dokoupil was a “mistake.”

Dokoupil’s line of questioning was direct but fair: “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” He also noted that the book “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” highlighting its omission of any mention of Palestinian terrorism.

Instead of engaging in an open debate, The Free Press revealed how CBS succumbed to internal backlash and forced Dokoupil to apologize. This reprimand of a journalist for merely doing his job reveals a glaring double standard in how major networks handle guests’ views on Israel.

The hypocrisy is staggering. CBS staffers weren’t upset because Coates was unfairly treated but likely because it might have been the first time he was genuinely challenged. For years, Coates has enjoyed kid-glove treatment from a media eager to praise him.

Take his recent interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Hayes echoed nearly everything Coates said, even going so far as to declare that Israel is committing a “moral abomination.” When asked if critics might accuse him of engaging in a “one-sided propaganda tour of Israel,” Coates was handed a convenient opportunity to deny it, invoking segregation and apartheid: “I am against segregation. I am against apartheid. I am against Jim Crow. Nothing will make that OK.”

This false equivalence—comparing Israel to apartheid-era South Africa and the segregationist United States—went unchallenged, presented as unvarnished truth.

Similarly, an interview between Coates and journalist Michel Martin on Christiane Amanpour’s show was another exercise in softball journalism. When discussing Coates’ comparison of Israel to Jim Crow America, Martin lobbed a question tailor-made to invite more inflammatory rhetoric: “You say it’s a place where the glare of racism burned more intensely than anywhere else in your life. Tell us why.”

This provided Coates the platform to make blatantly inaccurate claims about “roads only for Israeli settlers” and separate roads for Palestinians—an anti-Israel trope. The interview concluded with Martin summing up Coates’ position: “So your core conclusions are: it’s an apartheid regime, and the life there for Palestinians is unbearable.”


Ta-Nehisi Coates questions whether he would have participated in Oct. 7 attack
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a controversial new book largely focused on Israel, is facing widespread criticism for admitting that he may have participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks if he had been born in Gaza.

“I grow up under that oppression and that poverty and the wall comes down, am I also strong enough or even constructed in such a way where I say this is too far? I don’t know that I am,” he said in an interview with Trevor Noah released on Thursday.

Coates, 49, said he had not “said this out loud” but that he had thought “about it a lot.”

“ls there room in the world, and I don’t think there is right now, I actually don’t think there is, to have genuine, genuine horror at what happened on Oct. 7, to feel like there really isn’t a world in which, or reason, that I can apprehend — I’m not Palestinian, I’m Ta-Nehisi Coates — that I can apprehend for justifying anything like that,” he told Noah. “And yet, understanding at the same time that things have histories, that they happen in the course of events.”

He cited what he framed as a historical parallel to elaborate on his point. “The example I think about all the time is like Nat Turner,” he said, referring to the Virginia slave who launched his rebellion in 1830. “This man slaughters babies in their cribs. You know what I mean? And I’ve done this thought experiment for myself over and over.”

“Does the degradation and dehumanization of slavery make it so that you can look past something like that?” Coates continued. “And I try to imagine, and I think I can accurately imagine as much as possible, that there were enslaved people, no matter how dehumanized, that said, ‘This is too far. I can’t do that.’”

The “flip side of that,” he said, is the situation in Gaza, which he compared Gaza to a “giant open-air jail” where Palestinians are at constant risk of being “shot” by Israelis.

“I just wish we had room to work through that,” he said, “and to think about that and to talk about that. And I think that is not unique to Israel, that is not unique to Palestine, that is not unique to Zionism. That is human history, that is human beings.”

Coates’ comments have faced backlash from numerous commentators, who have accused the author of seeking to normalize Hamas’ atrocities.

“This is the heart of it all, not a call for freedom but the creation of a cultural space in the West to accept never-ending war and brutality until the Jews are gone,” said Haviv Rettig Gur, a political analyst based in Jerusalem.

“What you’re witnessing in real time is an elite attempt to justify and mainstream violence as a legitimate response to discontent,” added the former New York Times journalist Adam Rubenstein.

Noah, a former Daily Show host who has previously faced criticism for past antisemitic tweets, is also drawing scrutiny for comments in the interview, where he suggested that American revolutionaries could be seen as “terrorists” absent historical context.

“You can call it ‘the Boston Tea Party.’ That’s terrorism,” he said. “If you remove the context, everything has no context,” he added, claiming people “remove all context when speaking about Israel-Palestine.”


One Day in October, review: senseless, merciless slaughter – all captured on GoPros
One Day in October (Channel 4) is the latest of several films marking the anniversary of the October 7th terror attack on Israel. All are horrific to watch. This one, from award-winning director Dan Reed (Leaving Neverland), features survivors of the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri telling their stories. Among them is Emily Hand, who was eight years old when she was taken hostage by Hamas. You will remember her father, Irish-born Tom Hand, from the news: he was initially told that Emily was dead and declared it a blessing because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

In fact, Emily survived, spending her ninth birthday in captivity before she was eventually released. On camera here, she fidgets and smiles like any girl of her age. But she has seen too much. Every so often, her father says, she will divulge “little snippets… like last night in the car, she just told me that she saw at least 12 dead bodies at the fence. People that she knows, dead at the side of the road”.

The kibbutz lies just three miles from the Gazan border. The documentary takes us through the events of that day hour by intense hour, using recordings made by the terrified residents along with GoPro footage from the terrorists who approached the kibbutz whooping and hollering. “I swear to God, we’ll slaughter them. I want to livestream this. We’ve got to show the folks back home,” they said.

It is the stuff of nightmares, as families huddled in bomb shelters while the killers closed in. CCTV captured heavily-armed Hamas men swarming into the compound in scenes that resembled a video game. And one striking piece of footage: an elderly man, walking with a stick, following them in. He was there to loot, even as families were being put to death.
Parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin share their grief in heartfelt interview
In an emotional interview aired on Keshet 12 News on Thursday evening, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a hostage murdered by Hamas who became one of the most visible faces of the hostage crisis, spoke to anchor Yonit Levi about coping with their grief, and revealed new details about their son’s death.

Hersh, who was about 1.80 meter, or six feet tall, “weighed just 53 kilos when we buried him,” said his mother, Rachel Goldberg. He was held with hostages Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, and Alex Lobanov, who were all executed after 11 months in Hamas captivity. On October 7, 2023, Hersh and Yerushalmi, Danino, Sarusi, and Lobanov were all kidnapped from the Supernova Music Festival, while Gat was taken from Kibbutz Be’eri.

“They were found in this airless, completely pitch-black tunnel with no plumbing. They were all emaciated, and bullet-ridden… He had all sorts of wounds all over his body from the 11 months when he had been held captive,” she said. In addition to having his dominant arm blown off by a grenade when he took shelter after fleeing the festival, he had bullet wounds in his remaining hand, his shoulder, and neck, with exit wounds from bullets fired at him at the top of his head, and “then [he] was shot again, from point-blank range, with gunpowder, on the back of his neck, shot through his head a second time,” she said, using her hands to show the path of the bullets.

“Hersh was found on his knees, like he had collapsed, with Eden, beautiful, 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi’s head was on his lap, or side. It was this horrifying scene, all of them were so thin, all of them were shot multiple times, at close range… Just a nightmare.”

She said that she and her husband, Jon Polin, referred to Hersh and the others with whom he was held as “the beautiful six,” and that as she learned more details about their ordeal they grew more beautiful in her eyes.


Prayers for Thai hostage in Gaza echo from a rural church
Inside a church in northeastern Thailand, the Sriaoun family gathered on Sunday, their voices rising and falling in song, tears rolling down the eyes of some, as they prayed for the safe return of their oldest son.

Watchara Sriaoun, 32, is one of six Thais believed to be held captive by Hamas since the war began last October.

For a year now, the Sriaoun family and their fellow church members have prayed every week for his return. But there has been scant news.

"We can only pray to God," said Wiwwaro Sriaoun, Watchara's mother. "Asking people doesn't give us answers, and even the village chief or headman cannot confirm anything." One year later

At least 240 people - Israelis and foreign nationals - were kidnapped to Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas terrorists who burst across the border into Israel and killed some 1,200 people.

The attack provoked an Israeli offensive which, in the past 12 months, has been fought against Hamas in Gaza.

Hamas gunmen killed 41 Thais and abducted 30 Thai laborers during the Oct. 7 attack. Six Thais are still believed to be held captive by Hamas, according to Thailand's foreign ministry.

Last week, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, in talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, requested support for the release of the remaining Thai hostages, according to a government statement.

Before the conflict erupted, some 30,000 Thai laborers worked in the agriculture sector, making them one of Israel's largest migrant worker groups.
MIT president Sally Kornbluth skips Oct. 7 commemoration on campus
When hundreds of students and faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology congregated Monday on campus to memorialize victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on its one year anniversary and show support for Israel, notably absent was Sally Kornbluth, the university’s president.

A spokesperson for MIT told Jewish Insider on Wednesday that “the president had a long-standing prior commitment at that time, which unfortunately could not be rescheduled.” The event, held at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, was sponsored by the MIT Israel Alliance, Chabad on campus and MIT Hillel.

Since Oct. 7, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce has highlighted numerous antisemitic incidents on MIT’s campus, including disruptions of classes and campus events, blockades of buildings, harassment and assault of Jewish students and chants endorsing violence. The committee has also accused MIT of failing to enforce its suspension of a campus pro-Palestinian group that was punished for violating school rules.

Retsef Levi, an Israeli professor in the Sloan School of Management, said that despite Kornbluth’s “prior commitment,” “there could have been many ways for [the president] or other leadership members to express support” on Monday, “such as sending a video message.”

The spokesperson said that “other members of the senior administration attended the memorial event on campus.” Asked for names of which members attended the memorial, the spokesperson declined to provide further detail.
Year-long course at LA shul to prepare students for facing hate on campus
The antisemitic intimidation that arose at universities across America last year has inspired an initiative to empower and educate Jewish high-schoolers.

In reaction to the spate of antisemitism that has proliferated on college campuses throughout North America in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, Sinai Temple in Los Angeles has just launched the Beren Scholars Program.

Nearly two dozen juniors or seniors are expected to participate in monthly academic seminars followed by real-world experiences. The program started in September and is slated to run through the spring, with hopes that it can expand nationally in the fall of 2025 by partnering with other synagogues.

The goal is to teach students the roots of antisemitism and how to identify its manifestations. On the docket are lessons on social-media advocacy, and defining individual rights and violations of those rights.

Notable figures speaking at sessions will include Sarah Idan, 2017 Miss Iraq and an Israeli Peace Ambassador; and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Rabbi Erez Sherman at Sinai Temple is leading the new program, which includes a Shabbat dinner at the University of California, Los Angeles; an interfaith dialogue during Martin Luther King Jr. weekend; and a trip to the state capital of Sacramento to learn how to lobby legislators.

“I want them to realize that when they share their story, people are going to respect them more than if they hide that story,” he told JNS.
In company video, Amazon exec wears necklace with a map of Israel with a Palestinian flag across it
In a video promoting an upcoming AWS event in Las Vegas, Ruba Borno, AWS’ vice president of Global Specialists and Partner Organizations, wore a necklace with a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with a Palestinian flag across it.

News of the necklace worn by a high-ranking official comes as the company continues to downplay that an AWS employee, Sasha Troufanov, has been held hostage by Hamas for over a year.

Such erasure of Israel is common in Palestinian textbooks. It evokes the popular chant at anti-Israel protests “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” regarded by many as a call for genocide of the Jews in Israel.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to respond to a request for comment about the executive’s anti-Israel jewelry.

Borno was born in Kuwait, where there was a sizable Palestinian refugee community between Israel’s War of Independence and the first Gulf War, and fled to the U.S. in 1990. Her parents are Palestinian.

Sasha Troufanov, 28, was an engineer for Amazon subsidiary Annapurna Labs in Tel Aviv. Hamas kidnapped him from his parents’ home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. His father, Vitaly, was murdered, and his mother, Lena, grandmother Irena Tati and girlfriend Sapir Cohen were abducted as well, but released in the November hostage deal.

While Troufanov’s co-workers in Israel have vocally campaigned for his return, Amazon executives in the U.S. have hesitated to acknowledge the situation publicly.
‘Demonstration of Ignorance’: Anti-Israel Installation Riddled With Falsehoods Stands in Harvard Yard
A timeline of Israel’s history sitting in the center of Harvard University’s campus is riddled with factual inaccuracies, falsely accusing the Jewish state of starting the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, for example. One expert called it a "demonstration of ignorance" and questioned the quality of the Ivy League school’s education. Another said "pretty much everything" in the timeline is false.

The so-called art installation, "365 Days, 75 Years: A Reflection on the Ongoing Nakba," was installed by an anti-Israel student group, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, and was on display Wednesday and Thursday. It included a timeline detailing key events in Palestinian history before the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis.

"Israel launches attacks on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, unleashing the June War that results in the Israeli occupation of what remained of historic Palestine," the timeline read under the year 1973.

But that account is false. The 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict kicked off after Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israeli forces.

"This display is a demonstration of ignorance, disinformation, malice, and anti-Semitism," Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Washington Free Beacon. "It shames Harvard and makes you wonder what is being taught, and what is being learned, in its classrooms today."

"The account of the 1973 war shows a complete lack of knowledge and a desire to avoid the historical facts about the coordinated Arab attacks on Yom Kippur 1973," Abrams added. "In fact, even Al Jazeera would be a better source of information—it says, ‘Egypt and Syria decided to launch a two-front coordinated attack.’ This is pure disinformation."

Israeli legal scholar and George Mason University Law School professor Eugene Kontorovich told the Free Beacon that "pretty much everything" in the timeline was false. He said it was akin to describing World War II by exclusively noting that Allied bombings killed millions of Germans and that Soviets raped women in Berlin. The difference, Kontorovich said, is that those details on their own are true, while "most of the things" in the anti-Israel group’s timeline are not.
Harvard Crimson: Oops! We Did It Again
Oh, hey there. Did you miss us?

We know it’s been a while since you’ve had some edgy student activism spicing up your life. And since no one else on campus ever seems to take the time to disrupt classes, skip lunch for a 12-hour hunger strike, or plan epic sleepover parties on other people’s property, we knew it was time for your friendly neighborhood conglomeration of pro-Palestine activist groups to step once more into the breach.

And if we’re being honest? We’ve missed you, too.

Not a lot of people know this about us, but we have really strong main character energy, and when Sidechat isn’t all about us we start to feel a little empty inside. There’s just something so darn validating about being the focus of constant campus attention. (Except when The Crimson publishes the name of a speaker at one of our public events. That’s just mean.)

So yeah. When at 5 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, we were weighing what next to post to our historically uncontroversial and politically effective Instagram feed, we knew it was time to give the people what they want: A righteous defense of the occasional need to kill Jewish people.

Because cheering on freedom fighters never goes out of style — not even on days that the Jews are mourning their various co-conspirators of the Zionist oppressor entity. We even threw in a call to escalate the student intifada, since everyone loves when we use that word.

Now, we know some of you are tired, and “pro-Palestinian campus organization posts something crazy on their Instagram” is getting a little stale. But don’t worry, we’re proposing a game to keep you on your toes: Take a shot every time you read “activists charge Alan Garber with genocide, on the basis of potential links between the Harvard endowment and some Airbnbs.” Take another for every instance of “administrative response provokes howls from student activists who cannot believe anyone would actually enforce rules at a time like this.”

Are you drunk enough to understand our logic? Great. Now get the alcohol poisoning hotline on speed dial, because baby, it’s escalation time.


Masked protesters storm, occupy office of Melbourne Uni Jewish Professor
Masked pro-Palestine protesters wearing keffiyehs took over the office of Steven Prawer, a Jewish professor at the University of Melbourne (UMelb), Australia, on Wednesday, in an alleged protest over his academic connection to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The group, University of Melbourne for Palestine, posted multiple pictures and videos to their Instagram in which they can be seen invading the professor’s office and staging a sit-in. They can also be seen chanting and covering the door of his office in pro-Palestine stickers and signs.

One sticker said “antisemitism is a crime, anti-Zionism is a duty,” and the two signs read “Steven Prawer, your work will break your soul before it breaks the resistance” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The group said that they discovered pro-Israel memorabilia in Prawer’s office, including a picture of a sticker for Tel Aviv University with the world Shalom [peace] on it.

In another video, a woman wearing a keffiyeh and a mask interrogates Prawer as he talks to the police outside the office. When he attempts to walk away, the woman follows him and continues to ask questions about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

Prawer, an engineering professor and head of the UMelb Materials Institute, is the academic lead of the Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD program.

This, according to the protesters, was the reason for their actions. In a poster stuck on the wall of Prawer’s office, the group wrote, “Prawer spearheads a number of research projects in collaboration with Israeli research institutes, academics, and universities, such as a recent project with the Israeli Center of Advanced Diamond Technology.”

The protest was allegedly part of the group’s efforts to make the University cut its academic ties with Israeli universities, as seen in another poster.

“It is imperative that the University of Melbourne acknowledge and utilize its privilege as a settler entity to support colonized peoples and end their complicity in the Israeli colonial project and ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” the group stated.

Stay updated with the latest news!

They demanded that UMelb implement a scholarship for Palestinian students.


BBC Iranian expert who ranted about ‘chosen people’ pictured in IRGC uniform
Standing in military fatigues beside the IRGC logo, this is the “Iran expert” who caused outrage on the BBC last week with a rant about “chosen people” who believe they “have exceptional rights to the whole region”.

Posted on social media in 2019 by Iranian academic and BBC pundit Seyed Mohammad Marandi, the caption reads: “This photo was proudly taken... when I was a 16 year old volunteer fighting the US backed invasion of Iran.”

That unit was the 27th army of Muhammad Rasulullah, an IRGC division that has been described as “notoriously ideological” and was set up by Commander Ahmad Motevaselian, one of the founders of the terror group Hezbollah.

The picture raises serious questions about how the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 — all of whom used Marandi as a pundit — vet “experts” before broadcasting their views into millions of households. Marandi has been promoting Hezbollah and its incendiary narrative about Israel on BBC, Sky and Channel 4 widely since Israel went to war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But the regime affiliations of Marandi – who caused outrage earlier this month following a BBC interview in which he launched into an uninterrupted rant about “chosen people” who believe they “have exceptional rights to the whole region” – go further than volunteering in the 1980s to fight for the IRGC, the military and ideological custodian of the 1979 revolution.

Marandi, now a professor of English Literature and Orientalism, also advised a nuclear negotiations team that reported to late president Sayyid Ebrahim Raisi – widely held responsible for the mass-murder of thousands of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s.

Marandi’s close links to the top of the Iranian dictatorship also come via his family – his father, Alireza, is Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal doctor.

In an echo of Iranian regime rhetoric, Marandi also celebrated the Hamas terror attacks, writing on social media on October 7 2023: “It's been a great and historic day. Israel can't even defeat the besieged Gazans. How can the regime even contemplate confrontation with Hezbollah, let alone the Islamic Republic of Iran? It's time for colonisers to go back to their homes in Europe and North America.”
The New York Times Backs Holocaust-Gaza Comparison
It’s one thing to report on recorded testimonies, but it’s another to use non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with clear agendas to endorse these comparisons of wartime hardship to Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Yet, this is exactly what the New York Times guest essay by Dr. Ferose Sidhwa titled “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza” pushes forward.

The piece suggests that what American physicians and nurses witnessed in Gaza should shape U.S. policy. It also references what Human Rights Watch calls “indiscriminate military violence,” Oxfam‘s claims of deliberate restrictions on food and aid, and the near-universal displacement of the population—all serving as a prelude to drawing comparisons with Holocaust atrocities.

But here’s the truth: these claims, no matter how alarming, do not equal genocide, and they certainly do not equate to the systematic extermination of six million Jews, who were starved, tortured, and murdered at the hands of Nazi Germany. To invoke such a parallel is not only absurd—it’s a disgraceful trivialization of one of the darkest chapters in human history.

The atrocities of the Holocaust are far graver, and they are being shamefully diluted in the context of a complex war and the propaganda efforts of Hamas, a terror group that has ruled Gaza for over two decades. Hamas has repeatedly abused its own people, using them as human shields and exploiting civilian suffering for political gain.

Here’s why comparing this war to the Holocaust is morally reprehensible:
The IDF is not storming homes to tear families apart or beating pregnant women.
Israel isn’t forcing entire villages to dig their own graves only to shoot them in cold blood.
The IDF isn’t hurling infants into mass graves or executing people in front of their loved ones.
There are no cattle cars shipping Gazans off to ghettos or camps to be starved or gassed.
Israel is not conducting barbaric experiments on Gazan civilians to render them sterile.

The list goes on. Israel is not killing Palestinians in an orchestrated attempt to erase their existence. Israel’s aim is clear: to defeat a terrorist regime that has held its own people hostage for two decades and threatens Israel’s very survival. Hamas’ October 7 massacre was a pogrom—rooted in the same ideology of Nazi hatred, involving mass murder, rape, and torture. But the world somehow overlooks this.
EXPOSED: AP Journalist in Lebanon Shared Content Supporting Hezbollah Ally, Praised Terrorists
A journalist working for the Associated Press in Lebanon shared content supporting the Amal movement, a Hezbollah ally whose members have been fighting against Israel alongside the terror group. He also posted praise for terrorists and labeled Israel’s actions in Lebanon as “genocide” and “war crimes,” an HonestReporting investigation revealed.

The social media posts and biased reporting by Mohammad Zanaty, a freelance video journalist who regularly contributes to the respected wire service, compromise his journalistic integrity and AP’s credibility as one of the world’s most trusted news sources.

This is particularly alarming as global attention is focused on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and news consumers need accurate information about it more than ever.

HonestReporting has reached out to AP for comment.

Praise for Terrorists
In 2014 and 2015, Zanaty posted photos on Facebook that appear to show him donning Amal’s green scarf at official events of the movement. According to the Alma Research Center, it’s apparently a common scarf among Amal supporters and activists:

Amal is a Lebanese Shi’a movement founded in 1975 by the cleric Musa Sadr. In 1986, its terrorists captured Israel’s air force navigator Ron Arad and handed him over to Hezbollah. His fate is still unknown. According to the Alma Center, the movement has made a comeback as a terror group in recent years, when it vowed to aid “Palestine” and fight Israel alongside Hezbollah.

Since October 8, when Hezbollah started firing at Israeli communities, Amal operatives have been deployed along the Israel-Lebanon border. Over 30 have been killed after being involved in shooting attacks against Israel, the Alma Center said.


Al Jazeera Documentary Attacks CNN & BBC’s ‘Pro-Israel Bias’
Qatari-funded Al Jazeera claims to have the scoop. While HonestReporting has spent the past year (and many years before that) exposing anti-Israel media bias, we’ve apparently had it all wrong. According to Al Jazeera:
Ten journalists who have covered the war on Gaza for two of the world’s leading news networks, CNN and the BBC, have revealed the inner workings of those outlets’ newsrooms from October 7 onward, alleging pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles.

We’ve certainly found systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles during the past year. That includes Al Jazeera, which has acted as a mouthpiece for Hamas, spreading false propaganda and misinformation, and inciting hatred and violence against Israel and its citizens. So much so that Israel has taken the media outlet off the local airwaves and withdrawn press accreditation for its employees.

But pro-Israel bias in CNN and BBC coverage? Not likely.

So who does Al Jazeera rely on for its half-hour documentary? Three characters whose backgrounds make their views crystal clear:

Craig Mokhiber
Interviewee Craig Mokhiber is a former UN official who has accused Israel of war crimes, has spread the work of BDS activists, and has denied Israel’s right to exist. Shortly after he exited the UN, it was uncovered that he fraudulently turned his anti-Israel views into a means by which to distract from the real reasons behind his departure: his open antisemitism. (See the tweet below.)

Ghassan Abu-Sitta
Ghassan Abu-Sitta is a British physician who has a pathological need to get in front of TV cameras in order to accuse Israel of every crime imaginable. Which is hardly surprising, as a Jewish Chronicle investigation revealed that Abu Sittah has “praised a terrorist murderer in a newspaper article, sat beside a notorious terrorist hijacker at a memorial and delivered a tearful eulogy to the founder of a terror group that was later involved in the October 7 atrocities.”

Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill’s byline was on a rape denial article in alternative news outlet The Intercept. The article set about attempting to debunk New York Times piece, “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” In doing so, The Intercept sought to cover up the extent of Hamas’ sexual crimes on October 7. It instead accused the Israeli government and Israel’s supporters of concocting the charges.

There’s nothing new in the charges made against Israel by the interviewees and nothing that hasn’t already been debunked elsewhere. What is new are the claims that Western media are complicit in Israel’s “genocide” and “war crimes.”

Al Jazeera charges the Western media with platforming Israeli “propaganda.” There is no examination of the all too many times the media got it wrong at Israel’s expense. Instead, the media are accused of enabling Israel to disseminate a false narrative. Where genuine errors may have occurred in the fog of war or due to miscommunication, Israel is portrayed as a conspirator in a plot to promote disinformation to a compliant media.

To back up its thesis, Al Jazeera claims to have spoken with 10 journalists from CNN and the BBC. Only two anonymous figures, however, one from each network, are interviewees in the documentary — hardly a substantial number.

And it’s worth asking, why would any journalists who value objectivity and impartiality shoot their mouths off to Al Jazeera of all media outlets?


Hizbullah's Decisions Have Upended Its Relations with Shiites, Lebanon, and Iran
Hizbullah opened a front against Israel that virtually no one in Lebanon wanted. Entire villages, towns and quarters in Beirut's southern suburbs are now in ruins. Who will rebuild what was destroyed? This time, there is a general belief that there will be no outside money for reconstruction, including from Gulf countries, some of whom contributed a significant amount in 2006. Nor does it seem that Iran can spare funds to rebuild Shiite-dominated areas.

Resolving this problem and reviving a traumatized community will easily be a decade-long task, one that will neutralize Hizbullah militarily for many years ahead - as the 2006 war did for just under two decades.

What happened to the vaunted "unity of the arenas" strategy that Iran and Hizbullah formulated just last year? The arenas have been unified in ruination, as Lebanon's Shiite-majority districts go the way of Gaza. The Israelis are able to escalate to ever-higher levels of destruction without Iran and its allies being able to do the same.

Iran's two most potent regional allies in the fight against Israel - Hizbullah and Hamas - have undermined their respective publics' ability to endure new wars, which has had a crippling effect on their, and Iranian, power.


FBI returns Nazi-looted Monet pastel to Jewish owners’ heirs 84 years later
In 1940, the Nazis seized a Claude Monet pastel and seven other works of art from Adalbert “Bela” and Hilda Parlagi, a Jewish couple forced to flee their Vienna home after Austria was annexed into Adolf Hitler’s Germany.

After the war, Bela Parlagi searched for his art to no avail until his death in 1981. His son continued the search without success until he died in 2012.

But on Wednesday, more than 80 years later, Parlagi’s granddaughters Helen Lowe and Francoise Parlagi were reunited with the missing Monet after the FBI and a Britain-based nonprofit located it in the United States.

“It’s an act of justice to have it returned,” said Anne Webber, the co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, the non-profit that started helping Parlagis’ heirs search for the missing art in 2014. “It has huge sentimental feeling for the family.”

The 7- by 11-inch (18- by 28-centimetre) pastel, called “Bord de Mer,” dates back to 1865 and features a scene from France’s Normandy shoreline.

The family stored the piece with the rest of their belongings at a shipping company warehouse in 1938. The Nazis seized their property in 1940 and the Monet pastel was sold at auction in 1941.


Trophy vehicle-defense system gets top-attack upgrade
Israeli defense contractor Rafael has equipped its Trophy active protection system with a top-attack defense capability, closing a vulnerability against drones and missiles that has plagued even heavily armored vehicles, according to the vendor.

Rafael officials unveiled the upgrade in a briefing here last week held ahead of the AUSA arms exhibition in Washington next week, where the company will exhibit its wares.

At the briefing marketing executive Ehud Nir showed a video of the system undergoing live-fire testing, with a countermeasure destroying a drone hurtling toward a vehicle’s turret from high above.

The company declined to specify how the upgrade works or when the capability was first introduced on Trophy, saying only the system had undergone numerous development cycles since first being fielded more than ten years ago.

The top-attack capability is available by way of a software upgrade to existing Trophy installations, according to Rafael.

Trophy is a defensive system equipped with so-called soft defense measures, such as electronic warfare, and an active defense system that includes physical interceptors destroying incoming projectiles before impact with a vehicle’s body.

It consists of a number of sensors and a radar with four antenna panels mounted around the vehicle. The interception process engages only if the system detects that a threat will damage the vehicle.

The system is in use on the Israeli Merkava Mark 3 and 4 tanks and the Israeli Namer armored personnel carrier. Trophy is also found on American Abrams tanks and has been tested on Stryker APCs and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. In February 2021 Rafael signed a deal with Germany to equip the country’s Leopard 2 tanks.

Rafael claims a 90% effectiveness rate for Trophy.


Michael Rapaport and Sid Rosenberg tour Judea and Samaria
American actor Michael Rapaport and radio host Sid Rosenberg toured Judea and Samaria on a solidarity visit on Wednesday.

The visit, organized by the One Israel Fund, aims to bolster the morale of Israelis, particularly those living in the disputed territories.

Rapaport, a familiar face to Israelis for his unwavering support since Oct. 7, was joined by Rosenberg, another prominent pro-Israel voice in American media.

On Wednesday night, the two attended a festive dinner at the home of Amichai Luria, a winemaker of Shiloh Winery, with the participation of Binyamin Regional Council head and Yesha Council chair Israel Ganz.

In welcoming them, Ganz said: “Sid and Michael, in a historic period for the rebirth of the State of Israel when all our enemies rise up against us to destroy us—you are doing courageous, holy work for the Jewish people as our true ambassadors on the frontlines of advocacy. And I am sure I represent the entire people of Israel when I say to you here, from” the bottom of my heart, thank you very much.”

Ganz also thanked the One Israel Fund team who organized the tour, saying, “For decades, you have been a leading force in supporting the settlements, helping to strengthen our hold on the Land of Israel.”

Earlier, Rapaport and Rosenberg visited ancient Shiloh, where Eliana Passentin, head of the foreign desk for the Binyamin Council, presented them with a Hasmonean lamp to serve as the shamash for lighting their Chanukah menorah this coming holiday. The gift, an accurate replica of a lamp found in excavations at ancient Shiloh, was given on behalf of the residents of the Binyamin region of Samaria.


Leonard Cohen’s Lessons in Communal Responsibility
It was a quiet Shabbat on Oct. 6, 1973. Bernie and Eileen Weinberg were woken up unexpectedly in their small, desert apartment in Beersheba to the sound of a jet whisking overhead toward the Sinai. It was also Yom Kippur, the Shabbat Shabbaton (Leviticus 23:32), the most sublime day of the year, a day when the Jewish people—angelic in their white robes (kittels) and prayer shawls (tallits)—renew their commitment to God. “Ki bayom hazeh … lifnei Hashem titharu,” as it is written in Leviticus 16:30: “For on this day … before God, you shall become purified.”

Despite the consternation in the air, Eileen, Bernie, and the rest of the congregation made their way to the synagogue. As the solemn early morning service faded into a tranquil afternoon beneath the calm October sun, Eileen watched with concern as members of the congregation—after receiving a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in the ear—rushed out of the synagogue. By the conclusion of the afternoon service, only their kittels and tallits remained, draped on the now empty seats. The men who donned them had already boarded Egged buses on their way to the Sinai.

Bernie and Eileen, who would become my grandparents and whom I affectionately call “Bobby” and “Zayde,” left the half-deserted synagogue for the afternoon break. That’s when the sirens blared. Then, the jets roared as they sped to the Sinai. Zayde, an aerospace engineer, described to me how he estimated the time that the planes took to reach the Sinai, complete their bomb runs, and return to the nearby base to refuel. To his dismay, many planes did not return. Unfortunately, many of those who boarded the blue-and-white Egged buses did not return either. Those kittels and tallits remained in the synagogue never to be donned again.

On that same day, as Matti Friedman describes in his book Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, Canadian musical icon Leonard Cohen was living on the Greek island of Hydra, “where he had a refuge in a little white house up the hill from the ferry dock.” After news of the Yom Kippur War reached this paradise in the Aegean Sea, Cohen decided to leave his partner, Suzanne, and baby boy Adam and head to the Sinai. He later described that in his “own tradition, which is the Hebrew tradition … you sit next to the disaster and lament … you don’t avoid the situation, you throw yourself into it.” And so, to the Sinai Cohen went—and in the Sinai Cohen performed.

Friedman describes Cohen’s experience during those few weeks in the Sinai; weeks that served as a microcosm for the macrocosmic transition that Israeli society would later experience. In retrospect, those bloodstained weeks served as the State of Israel’s figurative Yom Kippur; it was a period of reckoning that, by and large, renewed the people of Israel’s commitment to God. For many soldiers, at the helm of the Yom Kippur service was Leonard Cohen. He was their cantor leading the services with hymns such as “Suzanne” and “Bird on the Wire” as well as the yet-to-be-released “Who by Fire” and “Hallelujah.”

At one point in his book, Friedman relays an interview he had with one of the soldiers who was present at a Cohen concert in the Sinai. The soldier said:
What touched me very deeply … was this Jew hunched over a guitar, sitting quietly and playing for us. I asked who he was, and someone said he was from Canada or God knows where, a Jew who came to raise the spirit of the fighters. It was Leonard Cohen. Since then, he has a corner of my heart.

Indeed, it was there in the Sinai that Cohen wrote, in an early draft of his 1974 hit “Lover Lover Lover,” that “[He] went down to the desert to help [his] brothers fight.” Cohen heeded Moses’ enduring call, “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here?” (Numbers 32:6). He bore a sense of communal—nay, familial—responsibility. He was leading the services amid the congregation.
The rare, unusual Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur 'machzorim' at the National Library of Israel
In the absence of sacrificial goats, the observance of Yom Kippur today consists mainly of fasting and the recitation of the day’s long and intricate liturgy, which, along with that for Rosh Hashanah, is usually found in a special prayerbook called a mahzor. The writer David Geffen describes some of the outstanding mahzorim found at the National Library of Israel, including one published in New York in 1760. The oldest is known somewhat misleadingly as the Worms mahzor:

This festival prayerbook of the Ashkenazi rite was written on parchment in beautiful calligraphy, with illumination and colorful ink decoration. According to Yoel Finkelman, . . . “When the Jewish community of Wurzburg, Germany, was destroyed in 1298, the refugees fled with two enormous handwritten parchment mahzorim: one created in 1272, and the other in 1280. . . . Some of the refugees settled in the city of Worms, and their rescued prayer books became symbols of the community’s identity and a source for its liturgy for hundreds of years. Cantors would regularly use these two volumes, adding their own handwritten notes to help navigate the prayers and tunes.”
Giving Thanks to God at Auschwitz
There is knowledge of the survivors’ hearts that belongs to Hashem alone. And for the time being the survivors themselves can transmit their experiences across the generations, in hopes that the firsthand immediacy and reality of the Holocaust and its possible meanings will outlive them. “You know what we got for rations, for food?” Rabbi Nissen Mangel brandished the knots of his clenched hand: “This size of bread, and three quarters all moldy!”—such was Mangel’s daily sustenance at Auschwitz, 79 years earlier. “But we ate the mold also. You realize, this was also a nes? You know what the mold is? Organic antibiotic. What you make penicillin from? From mold. This saved so many Yiddin. Can you imagine? Nissim nissim nissim nissim!”

Miracles, miracles, miracles, miracles! Rav Nissen lost his father, his grandfather, his home, and his childhood in the Holocaust. Within this infinite cruelty he lived out events impossible enough to affirm God’s presence and power. There was the miracle of Josef Mengele twice deciding not to order the execution of young Nissen Mangel, and the miracle of the SS officer who made sure Mangel survived the forced march from Auschwitz to Gunskirchen, the Austrian camp near Mauthausen from which he was liberated in May of 1945. There was the miracle of being alive each morning when the march resumed. “When the SS got tired at night, 1 or 2 o’clock, we lay down. Where did we lay down? A field of snow. Subfreezing temperature in snow, without a blanket. How come we didn’t freeze to death? Ask how such a thing is possible. Nissim!”

It is churlish to dispute the miraculousness of Mangel’s survival. He is one of the last of the living who was there. The Germans tattooed a number on his arm. Mangel’s sister lost several toes to frostbite in the frigid weeks before the Red Army’s arrival on Jan. 27, 1945. She too survived the war, and lived well into the 21st century.

Mangel’s translation of the entire Rosh Hashana machzor in three months on instruction from the Lubavitcher rebbe seems a milder assertion of cosmic unlikelihood than the fact of either sibling surviving the tortures the Nazis inflicted on them. “Aaron, you ask me: Where was God?” Rav Nissen said, in response to the usual theological queries about the genocide of Europe’s Jews. “I say, ‘how could a person not believe in God?’ All the nissim until now. Nissim, nissim, nissim! I told you the tip of the iceberg. But even the tip, you say: ‘How did it happen?’”

Rav Nissen and his family share a theology that prohibits Jews from living lives of despair. However horrible things are, however little we understand them, however much we may doubt, we do not have the right to see it all as meaningless.

When I visited Rav Nissen’s Crown Heights home on a Sunday afternoon in the winter of 2023, the earth-colored holy books spilled out of every crawl space, just as one of his grandsons promised me they would. “My cousin Laize came to this realization a few years ago that any book he’s opened in my grandfather’s house has notes tucked in it,” Ari Herson, the Chabad Hasidic movement’s young emissary in Mendham and Chester, New Jersey, had told me in Poland, three weeks earlier. “Every nook and cranny in that house has sforim. You open the closet upstairs and on top of the clothing there’s a pile of sforim.” Volumes towered to the ceiling in the solarium enclosing Rav Nissen’s porch, overlooking Empire Boulevard. More books filled the top shelf of the closet where his black jackets hung. At 90 years old, Rav Nissen would teach a shiur later that night on the Ein Yaakov, the narratives of the Talmud, with the ruach and the acuity of someone decades younger.

Rav Nissen does not look like an old man. Below his unwrinkled face is a sturdy white beard which angles aerodynamically away from his chest, out into the world and the universe. There is no fatigue in his eyes, which radiate the same metaphysical seriousness as the rest of his compact body, which is not the least bit frail. He has a sense of humor, but it’s possible it’s been many decades since a frivolous thought crossed his mind. As an 10-year-old in Auschwitz, Rav Nissen pulled a heavy cart from barrack to barrack, a job that allowed him to search for his lost mother and sister. He remains a strong and determined carrier of heavy obligations.

Rav Nissen speaks with the dignified timbres of the murdered world, Germanic gravity in throaty counterpoint to the cheder and schmatta peddlers and wandering Hasidim and other idylls of Jewish nostalgia—and in counterpoint to all the much heavier realities of 20th-century European Jewish life and death that this nostalgia is meant to protect us from. The final period before the Nazis murdered nearly everyone who spoke with the polyglot Yiddish accent of Kosice, Slovakia, was an era of overwhelming danger and possibility for Europe’s Jews, one where New York, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Berlin, Vilna, and Jerusalem all offered competing visions of the future. Emigration, secularism, assimilation, extermination, or perhaps even redemption, whether through communism or Zionism or Yiddishkeit, loomed beyond the close horizon. The accent’s near-extinction in the present day doesn’t make Mangel a curiosity displaced from a foreign past as much as it elevates him to near-mystical isolation: He comes from a place and a time free of narishkeit, a world whose vast potential ushered millions of Jews into killings pits and gas chambers.

The accent is close to extinct—but Jews are not. In Krakow three weeks earlier, the day before his 90th birthday on the Hebrew calendar, some 95 of Rav Nissen’s living descendants and in-laws gathered with him and his wife, Raizel, in the Remah Synagogue, the medieval shul of Rabbi Moses Isserles, the great interpreter of the Shulchan Aruch. Five surviving children—Malkie, Gittel, Nachum, Menachem, and Yisroel—dozens of grandchildren, and at least 25 great-grandchildren packed into the wooden pews. Their universes existed because of the survival of this one man and the nissim that made it possible. Among them were rabbis and electronics wholesalers and importer-exporters and medical professionals and custom kippah-makers and a young backpacker who had flown in from Brazil, mid gap year. There were IDF veterans, one of them on leave from the newly erupted war against the exterminationists in Hamas, along with a U.S. Air Force chaplain. There were offspring who had drifted away from observance and others who had dedicated their lives to Judaism. There were Borsalinos and baseball caps, beards narrow and wide and wild and tamed and nonexistent, sheitels alongside free-flowing natural hair. A young boy in a white- and blue-striped sweater had tzitzit he hadn’t grown into hanging a little below his knees. A slightly older cousin had a powder blue Instax instant camera dangling around his neck. Newborns still many years away from their first conscious memory dotted the crowd, ensconced in BabyBjörns and bear cub onesies and an armada of strollers. There were at least a half-dozen pregnant women.




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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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