Tuesday, October 15, 2024

10/15 Links Pt2: October 7 and the Battle for the West; The Creeping Authoritarianism of Political Anti-Zionism; No BBC – not everything is equal

From Ian:

October 7 and the Battle for the West
It is this history that has set Jews apart from other communities for millennia, but it has also made them more resilient, because it is built on the proposition that God’s laws take precedence over the laws instituted by those with whom they live and work.

That which makes the Jews strong is precisely what drives others to fury and envy. How dare the Jews persist while we rise and fall? That is the burning question enemies of the Jews have asked themselves from the time of the Philistines, Egyptians, Persians, and Romans to the Nazis and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies. Now it includes a very angry and frustrated “woke” left.

What is particularly infuriating for them about Jewish history is that it has an overriding moral dimension, expressed through individual action both good and bad. If individuals or a nation suffer success or disaster, responsibility ultimately belongs to human beings, not class or race or gender or intersectionality. Good and evil exist; they are inescapable and crucial dimensions of each individual life, and they reveal the power and justice of God. There is no sidestepping moral decision making, no passage “beyond good and evil” for any of us.

Ultimately, accepting the validity of this perspective offers us a deep sense of freedom, but it’s a freedom that comes with a price: that of personal responsibility before the imperatives of God’s laws.

As it happens, the West is the great inheritor of that Jewish freedom and strength derived from the binding personal relationship with God and God’s laws. It has passed down first through Christianity, and then through the moral foundations of the modern state, including the notions of human rights and individual freedom that the left used to celebrate, and perhaps still does. But paradoxically, the entire thrust of our postmodern Western culture has been to neutralize and then deny that Judeo-Christian inheritance for the sake of a secular ideal based on political expediency and the universal power of self-interest.

Much of the West deliberately exalted this de-Christianized ideal in order to appear tolerant and open to other cultures and identities, including of course Islam. But it has come at a terrible price. By adopting what the French philosopher Pierre Manent has called a “radical secularism,” we have come to deny our own identities, Jew and non-Jew alike.

Which brings us back to October 7, and radical Islam.

The bitter truth is that the Islamists see through our disguise. They know what the West denies, i.e., that we are a Judeo-Christian civilization with deep religious and moral roots. Accepting that fact doesn’t necessarily mean confrontation, let alone unleashing a new spirit of “crusade” (the term from which both radical Islamists and liberals recoil in horror). On the contrary, taking pride in our Judeo-Christian inheritance would make it easier for Muslims and others to come to terms with its living presence in the West, both here in America and particularly in Europe, where the denial of that inheritance has sunk to the level of mass psychosis.

But doing this requires those of us who are non-Jews to acknowledge who we are, and our eternal debt to Judaism—which, paradoxically, the drama of the Holocaust served to obscure (except for evangelical Christians, who understand very well what Israel and the Jews represent for them and the rest of us). To put it slightly differently, just as we can’t and don’t expect Muslims to shed their core identity, we shouldn’t shed ours. The model for Muslims of how to adopt to the modern West should in fact be the Jews themselves, who live in freedom in our midst and recognize our laws without relinquishing who they are, or who they want to be.

In short, what may lie ahead is a new cultural synthesis that can grow up in the shadow of October 7, for Jews, Muslims, and the West alike. A synthesis in which we are all honest about who we are, perhaps for the first time.
The Psychological Barrier of Western Ideology
Western ideology and consciousness fail to grasp the depth of a culture that does not accept a Jewish state in its midst. On Oct. 1, just before Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, two armed Palestinians exited a train in Jaffa, adjacent to Tel Aviv, systematically killing seven civilians, including one young woman clutching a baby to her chest.

The two likely knew they would not survive their rampage to kill as many Jews as possible, but this probably raised their motivation even higher, presenting them with a prize of martyrdom and a place in the hearts of family and community who celebrated rather than mourned their deaths.

Western minds want to believe that we are all alike, that we all want the same things, and that we all just want peace. It is the same thinking that glorifies "resistance" as legitimate and fails to recognize that internal belief systems are far more responsible for behavior than any external environmental factors.

The West's noble but naive approach, based on wishful magical thinking, absolves the putative "victim" of any responsibility and assumes that a "fair" solution would solve everything. As with any ideology, this thinking is hard to crack, despite the test of reality.

A reality where Palestinian leadership rewards terror, with stipends if they survive and subsidies for their families if they are killed. A reality where Palestinians educate children that Jews have no history in the land and have no rights to exist as a state. A reality where Palestinians chose and continue to support Hamas. A reality where Hizbullah and Iran both seek to eliminate Israel.

The inability to recognize the defining role of ideology in the culture of the Middle East has incapacitated much of Western thinking and has tilted policy towards solutions that impose Western-based values on a culture that views things very, very differently.
Seth Mandel: The Creeping Authoritarianism of Political Anti-Zionism
Mason seems understandably baffled by the controversy. But it’s a glimpse into where political anti-Zionism is headed. Mason was told he violated a party rule with his comments but has not been told what that rule was. There’s a certain consistency to this. After all, if the modern left-of-center anti-Israel movements are going to subscribe to Soviet anti-Zionism, the same folks surely subscribe to Soviet logic as well.

At its heart this is an authoritarian mindset: It’s never clear what the rules are so you must obey the party leadership, never challenge it. You are in violation if the party says you are.

And it’s easy to see where this is going. Scotland has laws against “hate speech,” and the trend both there and in wider Europe is to increasingly criminalize speech. It’s likely that future crackdowns will make Mason’s punishment seem positively generous—he’s not even going to jail for saying Israel isn’t committing genocide! What a benevolent system this is.

Modern Western progressive politics exists on a slippery slope—there is no even ground. For how long will it even be considered acceptable to deny an anti-Jewish blood libel?

We should note the flip side of this. The pro-Hamas hordes marching through the streets of the enlightened West have been openly calling for genocide against Jews, including but not limited to chanting a Hamas founding statement that seeks the murder and expulsion of non-Arabs from the region.

This is permitted speech, but at what point will it become mandatory speech? In the Scottish National Party, it is not permitted speech to say that Israel isn’t committing genocide. It’s not much of leap from Mason’s expulsion to “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” becoming something like a loyalty oath, the way professing one’s anti-Zionism already is among various university clubs in the U.S.

“Israel should disappear” is rapidly becoming the default position of political parties and movements around the world. The SNP’s expulsion of Mason suggests it’ll soon become the only acceptable position.


Staunch Israel supporter Douglas Murray to appear in Tel Aviv in December
Everyone’s favorite pro-Israel commentator, Douglas Murray, will be going to the big stage on December 4 with a for-pay lecture in Tel Aviv on his experiences covering the Israel-Hamas War over the last year.

Murray, a celebrated author and journalist, has been ubiquitous on international media and has consistently been one of Israel’s most eloquent defenders.

Onstage, he’ll share his firsthand experiences and observations from the last year, including being embedded with the IDF in Gaza and traveling to the South and North of Israel. He will also discuss the media coverage of the war and the cultural and political undercurrents taking place in Europe and the US regarding Jews, Zionism, and Israel.

Event to take place at Charles Bronfman Auditorium
His latest book, The War on the West, seeks to defend Western culture against what he regards as a barrage of unjust criticism for perceived past wrongdoings.

The event will take place at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium of the Tel Aviv Culture Center.
Bill Ackman unleashes full support for Trump despite ‘flaws’
Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman has detailed his hefty support for Donald Trump despite the former president’s “flaws and mistakes”, as more of America’s super-wealthy go public to influence voters in an extremely tight presidential election.

The Wall Street billionaire denied in a lengthy post on X that backing Trump would benefit him financially, saying he didn’t need the money and that the Republican was the “superior candidate” for the White House.

Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman denied on X that backing Trump would benefit him financially. Bloomberg

Mr Ackman, chief executive and portfolio manager of Pershing Square Capital Management, backed Trump shortly after the former president survived an assassination attempt in July.

But his post on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) was the first detailed explanation of his refusal to support rival Kamala Harris despite his previous backing of Democratic Party candidates and philanthropic initiatives supporting issues that align with Democratic priorities.

“Some have suggested that I am supporting Trump because I am seeking a position in his administration. To be clear, I haven’t been offered one, and I wouldn’t take a job,” Mr Ackman said in the 1800-word post that listed 33 issues with the Biden administration that swayed him to back Trump.

He cited illegal immigration, which has exploded under the Biden administration, writing on X that the Democrats’ handling of the issue had included “dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents”.

Mr Ackman also said the Biden administration has not done enough to stem antisemitism following the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The administration had “encouraged” and “celebrated” anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on university campuses with “no consequences for the protesters who violate laws”, he said.

The billionaire told his 1.4 million followers on X, owned by enthusiastic Trump supporter Elon Musk, that the protests had “allowed antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the administration to quell this hatred”.


David Collier: No BBC – not everything is equal
Tonight – Tuesday 15 October- the BBC are running a documentary – ‘Life and Death in Gaza’. The BBC says the film ‘forms part of a group of programmes on BBC Two and BBC Four, and on iPlayer, marking one year on from 7 October’.

It is the BBC’s way of balancing things out because last week it ran a documentary commemorating the slaughter of civilians on October 7. It is a ‘Storyville’ production. What the BBC (and others) consistently fail to understand is that all things are not equal. You cannot equate those that were innocently slaughtered – with those who support Hamas and want to see Israel destroyed.

There are four Gazans ‘partially identified’ in the documentary ‘Khalid, Aya, Adam, and Aseel’. We are not presented with surnames – they don’t want people like me searching them out. But I still managed to find one: Meet Aya
Aya is the face of the BBC documentary.
Aya’s full name is Aya Ashour. She has been training for years as a propagandist but that is of little relevance here. Her support for violence, Hamas, terrorism and dead Jews is a different matter. This is what she posted on 5 May 2022 when two men armed with knives and axes slaughtered three civilians in Elad:

Aya Ashour supports terrorism

And on the 7 January 2023 when a terrorist slaughtered seven Israelis outside a synagogue – she came out with this mocking post:

And on the 29 March 2022, when a terrorist murdered five innocent civilians in Bnei Brak:

Or on June 20 2023 – after another terrorist attack in which four Israelis were murdered. She posted this:

Her timeline is FULL of support for terrorists, Hamas and terrorism.

This Hamas supporting, terrorist loving, woman is not equal, to a peacenik who went out to party on October 6 and was murdered by Hamas. And given she is part of the problem – and cheers and dances her way as innocent civilians are murdered – the BBC HAS NO RIGHT to twist the truth – and portray her as an innocent victim of this war. She may not be a Hamas terrorist – but she is clearly part of their support network. Putting her on our screens to play ‘victim’ is to insult the victims of October 7 and to promote raw Hamas propaganda.

As the documentary is tonight – I needed to get this out – so armed with just first names, I did not have time to find the other three (Khalid, Adam, Aseel). But just this one for now is enough. The BBC are showing a Hamas propaganda film tonight. They are portraying a terrorist supporter as an innocent victim. Let them know what you think of them.


South Africa Is Not Pro-Palestinian, It’s Pro-Hamas
On October 5, 2024 Sheikh Riad Fataar declared, “We are all Hamas.”

Fataar — who is the president of the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), a large Muslim organization in South Africa — delivered this message at a rally in Cape Town. Fataar’s comments and other actions coming out of South Africa reflect an open embrace of Hamas, the terrorist group that massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 250 people last year on October 7.

In South Africa, support for Hamas and hostility for Israel isn’t limited to Muslim clerics.

President Cyril Ramaphosa described October 7, 2023, as “the start of an onslaught against the Palestinian people” rather than a murderous and antisemitic attack on Jews.

Ramaphosa also invoked past grievances to justify Hamas atrocities. The week after the October 7 massacre, he cast the event as a consequence of the “occupation of Palestine,” as if killing women and children and raping girls at a music festival is the inevitable outcome of disputes over land.

Ramaphosa also compared Israelis snatched out of their beds and held in dungeons in Gaza to Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for plotting, supporting, or carrying out terror attacks against Israelis.

But this support for Hamas isn’t new.

The South African government’s friendship with Hamas extends back to at least 2006, when it was one of the few countries to recognize the terrorist group’s victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Pretoria’s ruling party affirmed this relationship by hosting Hamas delegations in 2015, 2018, and even during the current war.

Then, in December 2023, the South African government established itself as Hamas’ lawyer on the global stage by initiating an International Court of Justice (ICJ) case accusing Israel of committing genocide.

Though US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others have described the case as “meritless,” the proceedings have nevertheless helped normalize the outlandish charge of Israeli “genocide,” and increased political pressure against Israel. By doing so, South Africa has rewarded Hamas’ strategy of endangering Palestinian civilians for political gain.

The government’s open support for Hamas helps explain Sheikh Fataar’s declaration of allegiance to Hamas. Fataar similarly said in September 2024 that the whole world was praising Hamas and bragged about the meetings that his organization has held with Hamas leaders, including Khaled Meshaal and the late Ismail Haniyeh.

The October 5 rally at which Fataar spoke featured large pictures of leaders from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups. Signs declaring “Death to Zionism,” “Death to Israel,” “We are Hamas,” and praise for the “Al-Aqsa Flood” — Hamas’s name for the October 7 attack — dominated the procession of thousands.

Al Jama-ah Party chief Ganief Hendricks, who is a member of South Africa’s cabinet, clarified how he worked to bring about “Death to Zionism.”

Hendricks said, “I call the Parliament in South Africa to arm the resistance in Palestine. I invited Hamas to Parliament. I’m not sure whether they got the weapons, but soon after my call, they came to parliament.” Hendricks went on to say that he went to Iran and “asked Iran to give weapons,” and that Israel “needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Don’t question the armchair terrorists
Somehow, the controversy here isn’t that Coates has published yet another clump of historical revisionism partnered with his favorite subject: himself. No, it’s that CBS leaders turned on Dokoupil, criticizing him for violating the network’s standards of “neutrality and objectivity.”

The only news here is that CBS had any standards of neutrality or objectivity to begin with. But as if one bloviating pseudointellectual fraud wasn’t enough, Trevor Noah inserted himself into the conversation during a podcast to say that he’s “angry” at Dokoupil for daring to ask Coates about his views on Israel. Noah then proceeded to compare Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre to the American Revolution.

“If you remove America’s history and America’s this — then it’s like, yeah, those people who fought against the British, they were terrorists. You know what I mean? You can call it like, yeah, the Boston Tea Party. That’s terrorism,” Noah said about as eloquently as Vice President Kamala Harris after one too many chardonnays.

Meanwhile, Coates agreed and suggested he could have taken part in the Oct. 7 carnage.

“And 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. You know, I don’t know that I am,” Coates said.

It’s stunning that this even has to be said, but Oct. 7 was not like the American Revolution or the Boston Tea Party — unless George Washington’s men raped teenage girls at a music festival before crossing the Delaware or the Sons of Liberty burned a family alive and decapitated a bystander with a garden hoe on their way to throwing tea into Boston Harbor.

In reality, Noah is just trying to impress his oh-so-impressive guest, and by trying to mimic Coates’s brand of pseudointellectual fiction, he ended up comparing the creation of the country that has made him rich and famous to the slaughter of Jews.

Either Coates and Noah are dumb, evil, or both. But let’s not miss the fundamental problem here (at least, beyond the justification of mass rape, torture, mutilation, and murder): The podcast’s tagline displayed proudly on the wall is “conversation without limits.”

But that’s the opposite of what Noah, who claimed to be “flabbergasted” by Dokoupil’s questioning, wants, at least for the people who dare to question his crowd’s brand of armchair terrorism.

Because what they actually want is for people such as Ta-Nehisi Coates to be protected from criticism. Why? Because their ideas are doomed to crumple under even the mildest criticism.
John Aziz: What Ta-Nehisi Coates Doesn't Understand About Us Palestinians
Unlike Coates' hypothetical Palestinian version of himself, millions of actual Palestinians living in Palestine are certain that Hamas went too far. In the most recent polls of Palestinians, like this one by AWRAD published in September, support for Hamas has fallen dramatically—to just 6 percent of the population. Indeed, the same poll shows that 62 percent of Gazans now favor a two-state solution.

Gazans understand that Hamas and October 7 have totally failed them. It's something of a tragedy that the Palestinians most impacted by Israel's war have more intolerance for violence than Coates.

The October 7 massacre did nothing to help Palestinians achieve self-determination; it only deepened the conflict and worsened conditions for ordinary Palestinians. And if you give Hamas a fully-independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, they will simply use it as an opportunity to launch the next war.

We have to be clear that that is the wrong path. The only people who are qualified to lead a Palestinian state are the ones who want to peacefully coexist along with Israel—not jihadists dreaming of conquest and plunder. We need a peaceful, optimistic, futuristic vision, not a mediaeval diorama of inter-ethnic conflict.

That is the means by which we can return to a serious peace process. The Oslo process was derailed by extremists on both sides—including both Hamas and the extremist right-wing Israeli settlers who killed Yitzhak Rabin, but it remains the most viable model.

To return to the abandoned peace process, we need to recognize that oversimplifying the conflict and placing all the blame on the more powerful side is not an intellectually serious approach and ignores the fundamental issues that continue to perpetuate the conflict.

I believe Ta-Nehisi Coates is an empathetic and thoughtful person who truly believes that everyone is equal and believes both Israelis and Palestinian are deserving of life—and a good life. But he has fundamentally misunderstood the Middle East. Just blaming Israel for everything is not going to get the future he says he wants.

I wish he could learn to see the conflict as so many of my fellow Palestinians do one year after a horrific and devastating war. Violence will never be the answer.
Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Temptations of Narrative
Coates was once a proud company man. “I got some of the best motherfuckers—excuse my language—in the business,” he said on the “Longform” podcast in 2015, praising his copy editors at The Atlantic, and calling out the masthead by name. “I’ve told them, as long as they’re going to be there, I’m going to be there.” Three years later, he left. “I became the public face of the magazine in many ways and I don’t really want to be that. I want to be a writer,” he told the Times. When he returned home from Palestine, he reached out to the Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi to learn more. “I think he felt that he had been conned,” Khalidi told New York magazine in a recent profile of Coates. His ignorance was nurtured by his profession, Coates believes—by mainstream journalism, and specifically by white editors and colleagues, many of them friends. “There were no Palestinian writers or editors around me,” he writes. “But there were many writers, editors, and publishers who believed in the nobility of Zionism and had little regard for, or simply could not see, its victims.”

Coates makes the case that his white colleagues and bosses stood in the way of his seeing a more complete picture. But his critics on the left, many of them of color, have long pointed out these very blind spots in his work—the parochialism of his politics and his reticence where Muslim, and particularly Palestinian, death and suffering were concerned. Such writers as Pankaj Mishra and Cornel West have remarked on the “missing interrogations” (Mishra’s words) in Coates’s writing about President Obama. As West points out, “Coates praises Obama as a ‘deeply moral human being’ while remaining silent” on drone attacks, the nearly thirty thousand bombs that rained down on seven Muslim-majority nations in one year alone, and Israel’s killings of five hundred and fifty Palestinian children in fifty days during the 2014 Gaza war. It can be difficult to hear one’s critics, but consider, too, how many of Coates’s intellectual heroes were fluent and consistent in their criticisms of Israel, from Malcolm X to Toni Morrison. The historian Tony Judt, whose work has been crucial to Coates, gave an extensive interview about Israel in 2011—in The Atlantic, Coates’s own magazine, no less. To look back over Coates’s blog is to encounter a writer who knew that a reckoning was coming; in one post, he listed the subjects and books that were on his mind, all that was left to read. “My whole project suffers from a kind of bias,” he wrote in 2015. “I haven’t yet grappled with Israel.”

The story Coates wants to tell in “The Message,” however, is one of sudden epiphany. “The light was blinding,” he writes. “But when it cleared I had new eyes, and I could see my own words in new ways—and the words from which they were derived.” That epiphany is a mainstay of Western writing about Palestine—“apparent blindness followed by staggering realization”—as the British Palestinian novelist Isabella Hammad points out in her new book, “Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative,” noting that “the pressure is again on Palestinians to tell the human story that will educate and enlighten others and so allow for the conversion of the repentant Westerner, who might then descend onto the stage if not as a hero then perhaps as some kind of deus ex machina.”

The blinding light that Coates saw revealed his own words to him. In the shadows remain the very people his story attempted to aid. Magazine profiles promoting the new book feature photographs of Coates in Palestine, diligently writing in his notebook with the city of Lydda, the site of a brutal massacre, in the background. On the morning talk shows, he looks resolved, if uneasy, as his face fills the screen.
Caroline Glick: Visiting the Hell of October 7th
Join JNS senior contributing editor Caroline Glick for this special Oct. 7 episode of In-Focus from one of the communities most affected by the Hamas massacre, Kfar Aza. Glick reflects and discusses some of the lessons Israel, the Jewish people, and the entire free world must learn from that horrific day and this once-flourishing town.


Guardian admits ‘collective failure’ over October 7 documentary review
The Guardian has issued an apology after a furious backlash over its review of a documentary on the October 7 massacre that criticised how Hamas murderers had been “demonised”.

Written by journalist Stuart Jeffries, the review of Channel 4’s One Day in October was pulled last week following reaction to its suggestion that the terrorists who committed the deadly attack at Kibbutz Be'eri had been depicted unfairly.

In an apology published on its website on Monday evening the Guardian said while it believed that the review did condemn the “attack’s perpetrators”, it ultimately failed to meet the paper’s editorial standards in its criticism of the documentary.

“The Guardian considers the article did convey the harrowing footage and powerful survivor interviews and condemned the attack’s perpetrators,” it said.

“But the unacceptable terms in which it went on to criticise the documentary were inconsistent with our editorial standards.

“This was a collective failure of process and we apologise for any offence caused.”

The apology ended by saying that the article had been removed from the Guardian’s website.

Using CCTV and GoPro footage, One Day in October recounts the deadly massacre of Kibbutz Be'eri which killed over 100 Israelis and saw 32 hostages taken into Gaza.

Jeffries’ four-star review of the documentary immediately sparked a furore last week, after he lamented that the attack’s perpetrators were negatively depicted as "testosterone-crazed Hamas killers" and "shameless civilian looters”.

“This disturbing documentary about the attack on Be’eri kibbutz is full of troubling interviews and phone/CCTV footage,” the website’s introduction said. “Sadly, it also demonises Gazans as either killers or looters.”

The review went on to say how “All our sympathies are with relatable Israelis...By contrast, Hamas terrorists are a generalised menace on CCTV, their motives beyond One Day in October’s remit.”


UKLFI: Irish Government Reconsidering Ban on Trade in Goods and Services Produced by Israelis in East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria
The Irish government is reconsidering banning trade in goods and services produced by Israelis in East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”).

A Bill to this effect was introduced into the Irish Parliament by Senator Frances Black in 2018. As UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) pointed out at the time, the Bill was illegal since the EU has exclusive competence over foreign trade policy of its Member States. The Irish Attorney-General and the EU Commission agreed, and successive Irish governments prevented the Irish Parliament adopting the Bill.

The current Irish government has sought fresh advice from the Irish Attorney General following the non-binding Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding Israel’s Policies and Practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip delivered on 19 July 2024.

The Attorney General briefed Irish government coalition leaders on 14 October 2024 and intends to present formal advice to the Irish Cabinet next week.

Ireland Israel Alliance has circulated comments by UKLFI (together with its earlier analysis) on the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion and Opinions by Professor Takis Tridimas obtained by supporters of the Frances Black Bill.

According to UKLFI, the fundamental point remains the same: the EU has exclusive competence for foreign trade policy. It is for the EU to decide whether changes should be made to the foreign trade policy in the light of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion, and not for Ireland to take unilateral steps that compromise the uniformity of the foreign trade policy and create barriers to trade in the EU’s internal market.


Swiss Islamist Tariq Ramadan Abandoned by His Friends after Rape Conviction
Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan, once the darling of European Islamism, finds himself alone and abandoned. Ramadan, who faced repeated rape claims over the years, is now facing three years in a Swiss prison without a friend in the world. Ramadan’s abandonment comes after the Criminal Appeal and Revision Chamber of the Court of Justice in the Swiss canton of Geneva overturned a lower court’s 2023 acquittal on a rape charge from 2008.

“The Criminal Appeal and Review Chamber found that several testimonies, certificates, medical notes and private expert opinions were consistent with the facts reported by the complainant. The evidence gathered by the investigation thus convinced the chamber of the defendant’s guilt,” the court said in a press release. Ramadan had 30 days from the time of the August 28 ruling to appeal his case to the federal court.

The conviction represents a nadir for Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, and one of the most prominent Islamist thinkers in his own right. His formerly eminent status won him positions such as a professorship in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University. The New York Times called Ramadan among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. The Muslim 500, a directory of those Muslims deemed by the Jordanian The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, lists Ramadan as among the most influential in the world.

Not everyone was so enamored of Ramadan. Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of the bestselling book Who Killed Daniel Pearl, claimed 20 years ago that Ramadan was an “intellectual champion of all kinds of double-talk” with a “racist vision of the world.” Caroline Fourest excoriated Ramadan for his oblique defense of his grandfather’s ideas in her 2008 book, Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan. “Far from expressing any reservations regarding the fanaticism that is an integral part of al-Banna’s ideology, he accuses those who would point to the unsavory aspects of his political and family heritage of conspiracy or post-colonial racism,” she wrote, adding that Ramadan would then encourage his readers to “take inspiration from al-Banna’s message—which he describes as a ‘step-by-step philosophy,’ a ‘profound philosophy,’ ‘philosophy without violence,’ but a ‘demanding philosophy.’”

This strategy was on display when he told his audience at the 13th Annual MAS-ICNA Conference in 2014 that they should wage a “cultural jihad” against America and that Americans should renounce their culture and become Muslims.

“This is a cultural jihad: Stop being too much Arabs and become Muslims; stop being too much Asian and become Muslim. And for the Americans, stop idealizing the American culture and become Muslim,” Ramadan said.


Top US Lawmaker Threatens to Revoke Federal Funding From Harvard University Amid Campus Antisemitism Crisis
US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) cautioned Harvard University and other elite institutions of higher education that their official accreditation could be in jeopardy if they did not do more to combat surging antisemitism on their campuses.

“Your accreditation is on the line,” Scalise said last week in a meeting in Washington, DC with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, according to recordings acquired by The Guardian and reported on Wednesday. “You’re not playing games any more or else you’re not a school any more.”

Scalise reportedly singled out Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University, all of which have come under scrutiny for not doing more to combat increasing antisemitic incidents and rampant anti-Israel demonstrations since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7. The lawmaker’s threat could potentially saddle the embattled Ivy League institutions with another crisis as they grapple with simmering antisemitism controversies.

Scalise added that conservatives in the US government are considering targeting the federal funding of Harvard and other schools, indicating that the relationship between the Ivy League institutions and US federal officials could continue to worsen if former President Donald Trump were to retake the Oval Office in November.

“We’re looking at federal money, the federal grants that go through the science committee, student loans,” Scalise continued. “You have a lot of jurisdiction as president, with all of these different agencies that are involving billions of dollars, some cases a billion alone going to one school.”

Six US congressional committees have continued investigating Harvard as part of their probe into campus antisemitism in higher education. The committee chairs have warned that the university’s federal funding could be imperiled if it does not provide a safe environment for Jewish students.

“The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism,” the committee chairs wrote to Harvard in June.


Anti-Regime Activists Challenge Former High Ranking Iranian Official at Dartmouth College
Anti-regime activists confronted a former high-ranking Iranian official implicated in the regime’s crimes against humanity during his recent appearance at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Specifically, they challenged Seyed Hossein Mousavian about his alleged involvement in the assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Germany while he served as Iran’s ambassador to that country from 1990 to 1997.

Mousavian, who currently works as a professor at Princeton University, wrung his hands nervously as he was questioned, suggesting that he was somewhat shaken up by the confrontation.

“When he realized he was going to be challenged, he got nervous,” said Aidin Shobnam, an organizer with Boston to Iran, a Massachusetts-based anti-regime human rights group. “He got scared. He was intimidated by our mere presence.”

Mousavian’s comeuppance took place at a September 30, 2024, panel discussion organized by the Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies programs at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The event was titled “Israel and Iran: The Future of the Middle East.” In addition to Mousavian, the talk featured Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, whose former president, retired Gen. John R. Allen, resigned in 2022 in the face of an investigation into his ties to the Qatari government.

For her part, Maloney was quite critical of the Iranian regime, highlighting its role in destabilizing the Middle East through its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Shia militias across the region. These groups, she said, “produced what we saw on October 7 in terms of death and destruction, and there’s no purpose to this. There’s no positive agenda whatsoever here. It is purely violence and destruction, and it is not worthy of the Iranian people. Iranians would not choose to enact those policies.” Later in the talk, she declared that the foundation of the Iranian regime is hostility toward the United States and Israel.
Campus Antisemitism Higher in Absence of IHRA Definition Adoption, New Report Says
US states that have not adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism experienced higher rates of antisemitism on university campuses after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel than those that have, according to a new report.

The nonprofit Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) this week published research showing that the consequences of eschewing the IHRA definition, widely regarded as the best in the world and used globally by hundreds of governments and civic institutions, have been destructive. According to CAM, the six states that have not codified the definition in law accounted for nearly two-thirds — 63 percent — of all antisemitic incidents on campus that have been perpetrated in the last year. An increase in antisemitism, it claimed, was measured even in pro-IHRA states such as New York, where only a “symbolic” proclamation by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has recognized the definition’s utility.

“Any debate over the important and necessity of implementing the IHRA definition of antisemitism, overwhelmingly endorsed and accepted by the Jewish community, should have long been over,” CAM chief executive officer Sacha Roytman said in a press release. “Unfortunately, we are now looking at the direct results of a lack of implementation, and Jews, especially Jewish students on US campuses, are witnessing and feeling the results of neglect.”

In its research, CAM distinguished between states that “implemented” the IHRA definition through action such as legislation and others that “symbolically adopted it.”

IHRA, an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel, adopted the non-legally binding “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and well over 1,000 global entities, from countries to companies. The US State Department, the European Union, and the United Nations all use it.

According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.


The Pro-Hamas Students Are on the Losing Side
One year after the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas in Israel, protesters chanting anti-Israel slogans stormed and smashed buildings at McGill University. In Vancouver, pro-Hamas demonstrators burned Canadian flags on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. A day later, an anti-Israel group at the University of Toronto started a "week of rage." Equivalent anti-Israel demonstrations occurred at universities across North America, in support of the butchers who had savagely murdered innocent Jews.

These pathetic losers have chosen the side of terrorists and murderers instead of Jews worldwide and Israel fighting for democracy and Western values against a constant onslaught of barbarism. One cannot help but wonder if they truly understand what they are marching in favor of.

There is no doubt that a Gazan mother grieves with equal pain to the Israeli mother for her lost child. But symmetry of grief is not symmetry of responsibility. It all comes back to who started it and what was their intent. Israel is fighting an existential war for survival and reprisal for an unprovoked attack and murder of its citizens on its soil.


A muted reaction seen in Michigan to spasm of antisemitic vandalism
On the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the home of University of Michigan President Santa Ono and several locations — with ties to either Jewish individuals or organizations with connections to Israel — became the latest targets in a spate of antisemitic vandalism that have plagued the state throughout the year.

Even as the attacks have been aimed against high-profile victims or leading Jewish institutions, one prominent Jewish leader in the state is calling out the state’s political leadership for muted reactions in their condemnation of the vandalism and other recent incidents, noting that few have used the power of their office to speak out against a spasm of antisemitism affecting the state.

Following the spate of antisemitic incidents in Michigan, which is a key battleground state in next month’s election, local Jewish community leaders remain divided about how the response is being handled.

“I’d definitely like to see more of a crackdown” from elected officials, Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, told Jewish Insider.

On the morning of Oct. 7, Ono’s home, the home of University of Michigan chief investment officer, Erik Lundberg, and the offices of the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator and the Jewish Federation of Detroit were spray-painted with words including “intifada” and “coward.” The group that took responsibility for the four acts of vandalism, Unity of Fields, formerly known as Palestine Action U.S., wrote that it targeted “businesses to universities.”

“We reject all financial support for the Israeli regime,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.

“There are a lot of incidents and it’s hard for [politicians] to even understand where they are all coming from,” Carolyn Normandin, regional director of Anti-Defamation League Michigan, told JI. Normandin emphasized that law enforcement, on the other hand, has responded promptly and worked closely with the ADL to investigate incidents.
Hamas Loyalist Professor: Jeffrey McCully at Moraine Valley Community College
American campuses are awash in a crisis of Jew hatred. Ineffectual college administrators have taken tentative steps to try and rein in the proponents of terror on their campuses, but they have yet to confront the most obvious source of this poisonous Jew hatred—their own radical faculty who have not only called for an end to Israel but have outright celebrated the barbaric bloodshed of the terror group Hamas.

The Freedom Center is exposing these radical, pro-terror faculty as the Top Ten Hamas Loyalist Professors. We will be publishing one school per day as a series on Frontpage. Jeffrey McCully, a professor of sociology at Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois, is #10 on our list.

#10: Jeffrey McCully, Moraine Valley Community College

Professor Jeffrey McCully has taught sociology at Moraine Valley Community College, located in Palos Hills, Illinois, since 2012. By most accounts, McCully is a popular and well-respected educator at the Community College. In 2018, he was awarded the “Embracing Diversity Award” by his college for “champion[ing] not only LGBTQ+ causes, but those of the numerous minorities on campus.” But over the past year a very different aspect of the professor’s belief system has surfaced—his support for Hamas and his promotion of the terror organization’s propaganda in his classroom.

In January of 2024, Moraine Valley posted a video featuring Professor McCully to its TikTok and Instagram accounts. The purpose of the video was ostensibly to highlight McCully’s teaching style and his respect for diversity.

“I really do my best to really create a welcoming environment for my students in class,” McCully states in the short video. “I want my students to feel safe, feel valued and feel understood, and like that they have a place here, that they belong here, because they do.”

What was overlooked by the College—or perhaps not—was the extensive display of pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian propaganda showcased behind the professor during the video clip.

Images from the video show a banner composed of triangular Palestinian flags draped across the wall of McCully’s classroom alongside several other large rectangular posters supporting Palestine and Hamas.

One of the posters visible on the wall states the genocidal pro-Hamas slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a call for the elimination of the Jewish state and the extermination of its Jews.

According to the website, StopAntisemitism.org, which reposted the video clip, that poster also contains the hashtag “#AlAqsaFlood” which “was the Hamas operation official name for the 10/7 Israel massacre.”
Cornell allows pro-Palestine activist to continue studies after anti-Israel protests, restoring visa amid controversy
Cornell University has decided not to suspend Momodou Taal, the pro-Palestine student activist from the United Kingdom who was previously set to be deported due to his involvement in a disruptive anti-Israel demonstration in September.

Taal was involved in a Sept. 18 career fair protest at Cornell, during which student activists disrupted the event in an effort to protest Boeing’s involvement due to the company’s connections with Israel.

The Cornell administration stated that the protesters at the career fair demonstration “screamed into bullhorns and banged cymbals, pots and pans, resulting in medical complaints of potential hearing loss.”

Taal has now been informed that he will not be suspended or removed from his courses this semester, according to The Ithaca Voice. However, Taal will not be allowed to access Cornell’s campus and will have to do schoolwork remotely.

However, he is now shielded from deportation.

“No matter what happens, the result is not going to be disenrollment, which would trigger the immigration consequences,” said Eric Lee, Taal’s immigration lawyer. “He’s allowed to continue doing his dissertation work.”

Taal was previously suspended during the spring semester for participating in an anti-Israel encampment that student activists erected at the university’s campus.

“The actions of identified faculty or staff have been referred to human resources and their colleges according to Cornell’s conduct policies,” a Cornell spokesperson told The Ithaca Voice about the career fair protest. “Three identified students also have been arrested for criminal offenses by the Cornell University Police Department and referred to the Ithaca City Court.”

Cornell administrators initially decided to revoke Taal’s visa following his second suspension for participating in anti-Israel demonstrations.
Yahiya Sinwar Is Ready to Enroll at Columbia University
The Left dreamed of a “new 1968.” Good boys fighting for a better world for everyone.

Dani Dayan, director of Yad Vashem, wondered instead whether Columbia University would go down in history as Heidelberg, the German city that was home to the university that produced so many Nazi leaders.

To consider them young idealists going through a phase of rebellion before becoming adults, as many did, meant hiding what was new and terrifying about them. Now the pro-Palestinian group that generated the student camp at Columbia in New York is throwing off its mask. “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” said the Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

The group celebrated October 7 by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used the name chosen by Hamas for the pogrom: “One Year Since the Al Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” with a photo of terrorists violating Israel’s security fence. They quote Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s late political leader. “October 7 was not ‘barbaric’ or ‘unlucky,’ it was strategic and anti-imperialist,” says the editorial headline.

Not just a campus, a caliphate. “Long live October 7,” wrote Nerdeen Kiswani, the director of Within Our Lifetime, an increasingly influential group on American campuses.

Students for Justice in Palestine, a student group with chapters on hundreds of colleges across America, also published praise for October 7. “The flooding of Al-Aqsa was a historic act of resistance.”

Columbia University Apartheid Divest quotes Lenin and Fanon and expresses solidarity with the “Axis of Resistance”—Iran, Hezbollah, Houthis, and Hamas—because they oppose imperialism. It also praises Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish state, calling it a “courageous move.” And defends Khymani James, the student who said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

So the green and yellow flags of Hamas and Hezbollah with the Koran and the Kalashnikov, the calls for a “global Intifada,” the photos of Sinwar, the inverted red triangles symbolizing Hamas’s military targets, the bloody hands of the Ramallah lynch mob, and the hunt for the Jewish student shouting “go back to Poland” were not incidents on the road, but part of the terrorist choreography that has taken over parts of the American academy.


Pomona College Suspends 12 Pro-Hamas Students for Oct. 7 Vandalism, Building Takeover
Pomona College in Claremont, California has levied severe disciplinary sanctions, ranging from expulsion to banishment, against 12 students who participated in illegally occupying and vandalizing the Carnegie Hall administrative building on the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

The news was first reported on Saturday by an Instagram accounted operated by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA), the group which led the assault on the building. PDfA acknowledged that “property crimes” were perpetrated but maintained that the college lacked evidence to identify the offenders. Noting that PDfA members concealed their identities with masks, it charged that Pomona president G. Gabrielle Starr has resorted to “indiscriminately” punishing minority students, as well as depriving them of housing and food, for the sake of upholding fascism.

“Pomona is surveilling all students and indiscriminately suspending them,” PDfA said. “Students are being targeted for: wearing keffiyehs or masks, attending a rally outside, walking out of class. Pomona can’t identify who did property damage so they’re resorting to mass racial profiling. No protest is safe here.”

Starr, who is an African American woman, has told a different story, however, accusing the group of “violation of our collective life on campus” in a statement issued on Friday which noted that the pro-Hamas student group was aided by non-student adults who managed to gain access to the campus.

“The destruction in Carnegie Hall was extensive, and the harm done to individuals and our mission was so great,” Starr wrote. “Starting this week, disciplinary letters are going out to students from Pomona and other Claremont Colleges who have been identified as taking part in the takeover of Carnegie Hall. Student groups affiliated with this incident are also under investigation.”

She added, “As always, we have due process on our campus, with opportunities appeal.”
Police Investigating Antisemitic Stickers Discovered Near Harvard Hillel
The Cambridge Police Department and the Harvard University Police Department are jointly investigating an apparent act of “religiously threatening” vandalism after multiple antisemitic stickers were discovered around Harvard Square.

The stickers were reported to police after they were discovered near Harvard Hillel, the University’s largest Jewish center. The antisemitic stickers portrayed the flag with Israel with a swastika instead of the Star of David.

The stickers, which were posted on both city and Harvard property, also contained the text: “Stop Funding Israeli Terrorism.”

Harvard Hillel Executive Director Jason B. Rubenstein ’04 said incidents of antisemitism at Hillel have become more prevalent in recent months.

“First we saw for a long stretch of time this was happening on social media, and then there were calls for escalation,” he said. “Now, we’re seeing it happen physically — in a physical manifestation — just a few feet from the Hillel building.”

Rubenstein referred to a statement released by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. In their statement, the PSC wrote that “now is the time to escalate.”

The PSC wrote in a statement that it “rejects all forms of hatred and bigotry and we remain committed to fighting for the safety and liberation of all peoples, which is deeply intertwined with the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”

This incident comes days after Hillel leadership reported “intimidating” posters discovered outside Rosovsky Hall last week.


Was anti-Israel NYT piece based on fabricated x-ray photos?
A recent guest essay in The New York Times titled "65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza" has come under intense scrutiny, according to reporting by the media watchdog HonestReporting. The piece, published on Oct. 9, featured X-ray images purportedly showing 5.56 caliber bullets lodged in the skulls of Gazan children. However, weapons and forensic ballistic experts have raised serious doubts about the authenticity of these images.

Over the weekend, numerous specialists took to social media to analyze the X-rays presented in the article. Their findings suggest significant discrepancies between the images and what would be expected from actual 5.56-caliber bullet wounds. Experts noted the absence of exit wounds, skull fractures, and changes in bullet shape – all of which would typically be present in such injuries. Damaged buildings in central Gaza as smoke blankets the sky following an explosion, seen from the Israel-Gaza border, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, August 26, 2024 (Reuters / Amir Cohen)

These observations have led to questions about the New York Times' verification process for the information presented in the guest essay. Critics argue that the publication may have inadvertently allowed misleading information to reach its readers.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the author of the piece, has responded to the criticism in a way that has further fueled the controversy. According to HonestReporting, Dr. Sidhwa denied that Hamas uses civilians as human shields and instead claimed that Israel engages in such practices. This statement contradicts reports from various countries, journalists, and international bodies, including the UN, which have documented Hamas' use of human shields.

The organization behind the doctors' mission to Gaza, the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), has also come under scrutiny. HonestReporting claims that PAMA has historical connections to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that has faced allegations of ties to terrorist groups.


HonestReporting: Why the media’s biased questions about Israel leave out critical context
Since its inception, HonestReporting has seen how the media turns a blind eye when it comes to Israel. From loaded questions to snarky interviews, the bias is clear. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, former IDF spokesperson, knows this firsthand—he’s witnessed media downplay serious terms like genocide, holding Israel to different standards.

While Israel deals with daily threats, the media needs to stop playing with the public’s trust and start telling the full story.


“Apartheid,” “Brutal Attacks” and “War Machine”: The Anti-Israeli Posts of Reuters Bureau Chief Exposed
Timour Azhari should have known better. As the Iraq Bureau Chief for Reuters, who currently covers the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, he is supposed to act as a role model for professional journalism.

Instead, his X (formerly Twitter) account reveals anti-Israel bias that casts doubt on his objectivity.

And it’s not just him: among his followers are top Reuters editors. They either knew about his posts and kept quiet, or had no idea about his activity — both options point to the decline of journalistic standards in what used to be a respected news agency.

Apartheid and “Terror”

Two posts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict expose Azhari’s true colors.

The first was posted during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May 2021, when Azhari was Reuters’ Lebanon correspondent. In it, he advises journalists to mention that “Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians,” otherwise their stories would be “lacking.”

He solidifies this so-called journalistic advice by attributing the accusation to “top human rights” organizations B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch — two agenda-driven non-governmental organizations that place their politicized agendas above the human rights they claim to be protecting:

If this is the manipulative editorializing Azhari practiced as a correspondent, it’s alarming to think about how he mentors his team as a bureau chief.

In a more recent second post, Azhari put the word “terror” in quotation marks in a post about the October 1 Jaffa shooting and stabbing attack, where two Palestinians murdered seven innocent Israelis:


BBC News website documentation of weapons in southern Lebanon
Notably, BBC audiences do not see that photograph in Gritten and Mackintosh’s report. The IDF has published numerous statements including photographs and videos of weaponry and other military assets, including tunnels, found in southern Lebanon in the past couple of weeks but remarkably, those photographs and videos have not been used to explain to BBC News website readers what Israel’s ground operation entails.

Among the documentation provided by the IDF is video of underground infrastructure and weapons found in a nature reserve run by the ‘environmental NGO’ called ‘Green Without Borders’.

That discovery would not come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with the US designated NGO that was described by WINEP in 2020 as:
“…a Hezbollah front, providing the militant group cover for operational activities prohibited under UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701—from conducting preoperational surveillance to firing rockets at Israel.” However, as CAMERA UK has repeatedly documented over the past seven years, the BBC has never produced any coverage whatsoever informing its audiences of the activities of that Hizballah-linked organisation.

On the evening of October 12th – twelve days into the ground operations – the BBC News website published a report by Lucy Williamson titled “Inside Israel’s combat zone in southern Lebanon”. That article includes the first proper account presented to BBC News website audiences concerning Hizballah assets that the IDF has discovered in southern Lebanon.


GUARDIAN COLUMNIST CRITICISES THE DEMONISATION OF HEZBOLLAH
The damage done to Lebanon by Hezbollah can’t be overstated, and includes, for example, their involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.

However, we do narrowly agree with the Bayoumi’s claim that Hezbollah isn’t merely a proxy group, in one sense: It’s also a global, ant-Western, antisemitic terror group which has carried scores of deadly attacks across the world for over four decades.

Let’s remember that, in addition to waging near-constant war against Israel, Hezbollah, CAMERA researchers have documented, also has targeted both Israeli and Jewish people and institutions abroad. On March 17, 1992 Hezbollah—aided by Iranian operatives—bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and injuring more than 200. On July 18, 1994, Hezbollah and Iran bombed the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 86 and wounding more than 200.

In the 1980s through the early 1990s, the group kidnapped—and frequently murdered—numerous Westerners, among them, journalists, academics, CIA officials and the head of the U.N. truce monitoring group in Lebanon, U.S. Marine Col. William Higgins.

On April 18, 1983 Hezbollah attacked the U.S. embassy in Beirut with a truck bomb, killing 63 people. A subsequent terrorist attack, employing a truck bomb, killed 241 US military personnel on Oct. 23, 1983 stationed in Beirut as part of a peace-keeping force. The complex operation also included a nearly simultaneous attack on the French military compound in Beirut, killing 58.

Other Hezbollah terror operations include plane hijackings and the April 12, 1984 bombing of a restaurant near the U.S. Air Force Base in Torrejon, Spain, which killed 18 servicemen and injured 83 people.

The Guardian columnist of course doesn’t mention any of this.

Nor, while accusing Israel in their current war with Hezbollah as “reigning death down on Arabs”, does he concede that conflict began on Oct. 8th last year, when terror group decided to show solidarity with Hamas after their antisemitic rampage by firing rockets at Israel – attacks which continued almost daily for nearly a year, many of which were launched from within Lebanese civilian areas.

Bayoumi’s defence of Hezbollah is yet another example of the extremism that passes for enlightened, progressive commentary consistently published by Guardian editors.


Globe & Mail Columnists Pen Sympathetic Obit Of Arch-Terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, Assassinated Hezbollah Leader
On September 29, 2024, The Globe and Mail published a highly sympathetic portrayal of a mass murderer.

An op-ed entitled: “Israel’s attacks have revealed Hezbollah’s fatal flaw,” was written by John Bell and John Zada — the founders of a British conflict-resolution non-governmental organization, one of whom, the column shared, has “met twice with [recently-assassinated Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah in a diplomatic capacity and can attest to his charisma and cleverness.”

Though the article’s title gave the impression that this will be a sober political analysis of the implications of recent events, the piece actually read as little more than an admiring eulogy.

Nasrallah Had The Blood Of Thousands Of Innocents On His Hands

Hassan Nasrallah was the leader of Hezbollah — an internationally-designated terrorist organization, including by the Canadian government. He first got involved in the group during its early days of bombing US peacekeeping forces and embassies in the 1980s, and by 1992 he became its overall leader and ruled with an iron fist for the past 33 years, turning the guerilla group into a massive military, political, and mafia force that wreaked havoc and left a trail of terror, blood and tears all over the region and beyond. His fingerprints were on everything from the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Argentina, to bus bombings in Bulgaria, to the murder and kidnapping of various Israeli soldiers, to international drug trafficking and organized crime. Most recently, Nasrallah spent the last decade of his life reshaping the region to build his terrorist organization into a dangerous and powerful military force advancing the agenda of the Iranian regime, usurping control of Lebanon from the legitimately elected government, violently suppressing freedom-seeking anti-regime rebels in Syria, and launching the past year’s non-stop rocket attacks on northern Israeli communities. When Israel finally tracked down and assassinated him on September 27, millions of people across religious, national, and ethnic lines celebrated the end of his reign of terror.

But the authors of this Globe and Mail piece were seemingly not among them.

Their memory of Nasrallah was as a “large and charismatic figure in the Arab and Islamic worlds,” a “rare historical figure who could manifest [his ideas] in his person,” and a “celebrated and quasi-deified” leader. While this may be how his terrorist army and its supporters viewed him, why on earth would any Western commentator be describing Nasrallah in these terms — let alone those supposedly interested in conflict resolution? Can anyone imagine a similar piece being written about Osama Bin Laden or Charles Manson after their deaths in a mainstream newspaper? No one in their right mind would be focused on the personality quirks and charms of those cult-leaders and mass murderers, so why are Nasrallah’s thousands of victims less worthy of respect?


Le Devoir Commentators Claim Israel Has No Right To Defend Itself

Taxpayer-Funded Briarpatch Magazine Promotes Call To Boycott Any & All Israeli Institutions

Model, ex-minister, defense chief's janitor: The Israelis who became spies for Iran
In recent years, Israel has faced an increasing number of espionage attempts orchestrated by Iranian intelligence services, ranging from social media manipulation to the recruitment of Israeli citizens.

Most recently, 30-year-old Vladislav Viktorson, from Ramat Gan, was detained for questioning in connection with alleged espionage activities conducted with his partner, Anna Bernstein. The investigation reveals that Viktorson was reportedly tasked with sabotaging communication infrastructure and ATMs, as well as setting forests ablaze, for a sum of approximately $5,000. Investigators claim Viktorson even agreed to carry out an assassination of a high-profile figure in Israel and to lob a grenade at a residence. The probe uncovered that since last August, Viktorson had been in contact via social media with an individual using the name "Mari Hossi." Their exchanges were conducted in Hebrew.

As part of this connection, Viktorson allegedly performed various tasks under the guidance of the Iranian operative, fully aware of their identity. These tasks included graffiti, poster hanging, money planting, and even torching vehicles in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park area.

Subsequently, Viktorson was reportedly instructed to sabotage communication infrastructure and ATMs, and to ignite forest fires. Some of these missions were documented, with payments exceeding $5,000 received for their execution. The investigation also suggests that Viktorson worked to procure weapons, including a sniper rifle, pistols, and fragmentation grenades.

Bernstein, an 18-year-old Ramat Gan resident, who works as a model, allegedly participated in some of the missions.

In a separate case, Moti Maman, a 72-year-old Ashkelon resident, was apprehended in August 2024 in a joint operation by the Shin Bet security agency and Israel Police. He faces serious espionage charges. The indictment reveals that Maman had a criminal history, including five previous convictions for various offenses such as extortion and tax evasion, with his most recent conviction in 2013. According to the charges, the Israeli-Jewish businessman, who had resided in Turkey for an extended period, was recruited by Iranian intelligence agents. He allegedly agreed – through Turkish intermediaries – to meet with an Iran-based businessman, ostensibly to promote business activities.

For this purpose, Maman traveled to Samangad, Turkey, where he met with two representatives sent on the businessman's behalf. The three held a phone conversation with the businessman, who was unable to leave Iran. The indictment charges Maman with offenses against state security, including contact with a foreign agent and entering an enemy state without authorization.
Palestinians Caught Stealing Antiquities in Israel
A Palestinian gang from Surif, near Hebron, was caught last week while plundering and damaging an underground archaeological site at Khirbet Umm er Rus near Beit Shemesh, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Thursday.

IAA said the looters caused irreversible damage to the ancient remnants at the Second Temple period site, which features ancient buildings, water cisterns, and numerous underground chambers.

Dr. Eitan Klein, deputy director of the IAA's anti-looting unit, said, "I'm glad we managed to catch this gang and prevent further harm to Israel's historical heritage. We will not let them steal our history from under our feet."


PMW: PA daily to Hamas: Release Israeli hostages unconditionally, “end fighting ‎unilaterally” in Gaza

PMW: True colors: Abbas visits Haniyeh’s sons, praises dead Hamas leader’s ‎‎“virtues on the path of the Palestinian national struggle”‎

PMW: Top Fatah official: PA Security Forces should train terrorists, not arrest them!‎

The Houthis after One Year of War
Over the past year of attacks on Israeli and international shipping, the Iran-backed Houthis have delivered a strong military performance.

Having solidified their line of supply from Iran, the Houthis are stronger, more technically proficient, and more prominent members of the "Axis of Resistance" than they were at the war's outset.

On Oct. 31, 2023, they launched the first-ever medium-range ballistic missile against Israel by a member of the Axis of Resistance.

The Houthis have struck and sunk commercial ships in support of Hamas, and they have weathered the year of war without suffering major setbacks.

Escalating U.S. and UK military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen did not end the Houthi anti-shipping campaign or even significantly reduce its operational tempo.

The Houthis have arguably improved their effectiveness and efficiency as the war has progressed, by taking advantage of fluctuating U.S. aircraft carrier presence in the Red Sea.

The Houthis also weathered a heavy Israeli retaliatory strike on one of their two main port complexes.
Visit Auschwitz-Birkenau to Fight Anti-Semitism
Our visit to the memorial also coincided with another October 7th anniversary: the Sonderkommando Revolt of October 7, 1944, at Crematorium IV at Birkenau. The Sonderkommando were Jewish prisoners who were forced to remove victims’ bodies from gas chambers and burn them in crematoria. They organized the only known armed revolt at the camp. Tragically, 450 of these prisoners were murdered. That was harrowing to see firsthand.

Equally chilling was walking into Block 11, where the Nazis first experimented with Zyklon-B gas used to murder Auschwitz victims in gas chambers. To also see where Jews were selected and later killed in gas chambers won’t ever escape my mind.

When we visited a Yad Vashem exhibit in Block 27, it featured the Book of Names. I looked to see how many Hoffmans were murdered and was astonished to find pages upon pages of victims bearing my last name. None of my immediate Jewish family members perished in the Holocaust. But what if some had been distant relatives? I’ll likely never know. What I do know is if my paternal grandparents had not been sent to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan during World War II, they would have likely met this same tragic fate as them. And I wouldn’t be writing this column today. I shudder thinking about this.

How people can deny the Holocaust - especially the atrocities that occurred at Auschwitz-Birkenau - is beyond me. There is verifiable proof with victims, ruins, artifacts, and documents concretely confirming this tragedy happened.

My experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau greatly parallels Niall Ferguson’s recent visit to my dad’s hometown of Vilnius, Lithuania. My dad was born in Soviet-occupied Vilnius, but always mentioned it being the “Jerusalem of the North.” Before World War II, Lithuania was home to over 160,000 Jews who comprised 7 percent of the Lithuanian population. Ferguson reflected on his visit to Lithuania, writing, “To understand Israel today, you must first understand what befell the Jews of Europe.” Over 90 percent of Lithuania’s Jews would eventually be wiped out during Nazi occupation.

He added, “It was here [in Paneriai, Lithuania] that the Nazis first systematically murdered women and children as well as men. Most victims were marched from the city to Ponary and stripped before being shot. Gold teeth were yanked out. The killing squads piled the bodies into six large pits that had been excavated for oil storage tanks.”

Everyone learns about the Holocaust differently. I learned from my parents, teachers, and direct testimony from several Holocaust survivors. My parents learned from their parents–my grandparents– about neighbors disappearing and never returning home. They even recounted meeting some survivors and those who hid in basements during the wartime period.

This upcoming January 27th, 2025, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial will commemorate 80 years since the former camp was liberated. As we reflect on the anniversary, it’s a solemn reminder that anti-Semitism must be combatted and the refrain “Never again” must endure.

I encourage all journalists to apply and attend this impactful seminar. I’m grateful I did.


23 EU member states have adopted a strategy to combat Jew-hatred
Twenty-three out of 27 member states have so far developed national strategies for combating antisemitism, the European Commission announced on Monday as it presented the first progress report on the European Union strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life announced in 2021.

Of the 23 member states, 14 have developed standalone strategies and nine have included dedicated measures in broader strategies against racism, against extremism or to promote human rights.

Moreover, 25 member states have adopted or endorsed the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism, according to the status report.

The 14 countries that adopted standalone national strategies are Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

The nine countries that have included dedicated measures to combat Jew-hatred as part of broader strategies are Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Slovakia.

In 2021, the European Commission presented the first-ever E.U. Strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life.

With antisemitism on the rise in Europe and beyond, the strategy sets out a series of measures articulated around three pillars: prevent all forms of antisemitism; protect and foster Jewish life; and promote research, education and Holocaust remembrance.

The strategy proposes measures to step up cooperation with social media companies to curb antisemitism online, better protect public spaces and places of worship, set up a European research hub on contemporary antisemitism and create a network of sites where the Holocaust took place.

The situation for Jews in the E.U. and globally has dramatically worsened since the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, noted the commission.
Man charged with hate crimes for car-ramming attack in Brooklyn, NY
The Shmira Public Safety organization shared an online video depicting a driver yelling an antisemitic threat, accelerating his car towards a Jewish man and driving up on the sidewalk in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Police arrested Muhammad Hashim, 31, the man allegedly behind the wheel who said “I’m gonna kill you f***** Jews,” on Oct. 12 at 12:20 a.m.

Hashim had returned to the scene of the crime shortly after the incident, prompting Shmira patrol units to follow him, photograph the car and call the New York City Police Department.

The Jewish safety group says Hashim attempted to hit the 43-year-old Jewish man. According to police, the charges do not reflect that claim.

Prosecutors charged Hashim with reckless endangerment as a hate crime; second-degree reckless endangerment; aggravated harassment based on religion or race; and criminal possession of a weapon with an additional count of false personation added later.
Assault of rabbi outside Maryland Jewish center being investigated as hate crime

Attackers physically, verbally assault Jewish boy in Paris

Long-lost Jewish text stolen by Nazis to be returned after mysteriously appearing on rare book website
A centuries-old Jewish text that mysteriously ended up on an online marketplace is now returning home.

In a press release last week, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) announced that a district judge confirmed a private owner's forfeiture of the Di Gara text, which dates back to the 16th century.

The book will be given to the Jewish Theological Seminary of the University of Jewish Studies in Budapest, the SDNY press release said. It was originally published in Venice by Giovanni di Gara, a printer who specialized in Hebrew books, in the late 1500s.

"The Di Gara text is comprised of two works from the Jewish faith: (1) the Chamisa Humshe Torrah (Five Books of Moses), or the Jewish Torrah in book form, and (2) the Haftarot, a series of selections from the Hebrew Bible," the release explained.

A centuries-old book that was spotted on AbeBooks is now being returned to its rightful owner. (iStock/U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York)

The book changed hands over the years, and was owned by a 19th-century rabbi named Lelio Della Torre until his death.

Della Torre's collection was then donated to the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, where the Di Gara text was stolen by Nazi soldiers in 1944.

"In 1944, in the midst of World War II and the Jewish Holocaust, Nazi forces invaded Budapest and seized and occupied the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, looting its holdings," the SDNY statement read. "The Di Gara Text is believed to have disappeared during this period."


Matisyahu: Teshuva in the Spotlight
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to musician Matisyahu Miller—known as “Matisyahu”—who has publicly re-embraced his Judaism and Zionism since October 7.

Matisyahu’s public persona has long been subject to scrutiny and analysis. Comparatively few people, though, have listened to his story in depth. In this episode we discuss:
—How has the public expression of Matisyahu’s Jewish identity ebbed and flowed throughout his life?
—Is there anything Matisyahu would change about the Orthodox community?
—How has the inwardness of Matisyahu’s Jewish identity guided him throughout his life?

Tune in to hear a conversation about what it means to be, in Matisyahu’s words, “a pnimius Yid.”

Grammy-nominated artist Matisyahu is a singer, songwriter, rapper, and alternative rock musician. He's known for his skill in blending reggae and hip hop as he provides a raw expression of his spirituality. His long and winding career consists of seven albums including chart-topping Light, Youth, Spark Seeker, Akeda, and Undercurrent with hits such as "One Day", "Sunshine", and "King Without A Crown". Through his lyrics, Matisyahu develops a personal, artistic, and sophisticated way to express the yearning for deep spiritual meaning, and as his own beliefs opened up to find more variety and depth, the desire for his performances to match the unpredictable flow of life developed as well.


Rare archival photos document Sukkot in early years of Jewish state
In anticipation of the Sukkot holiday, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) is unveiling rare archival photos that capture how Sukkot was celebrated in Israel during its early years.

Among the four images, the oldest is a photograph by Abraham Malavsky—one of Israel’s most esteemed photographers known for documenting the history of Israel before and after the establishment of the state. This 1955 image features a group of young girls at the KKL-JNF’s “Jerusalem Flag” ceremony held in the capital during the intermediate days of Sukkot. At this ceremony, the Jerusalem flag was awarded to the school that excelled in the annual competition for conducting numerous activities in support of KKL-JNF.

A second image, from the “Photo Aviv” studio, captures a blessing on the “Four Species” in Jerusalem from 1967. The collection also includes two photographs from 1979: one depicting a meticulous inspection of a lulav (Photo by Dov Dafnai) and another showing the selection of a lulav (Photo by Dafnai-Ish Shalom).

“These images reveal how the traditions of the holiday have been preserved and remain relevant to this day,” said Efrat Sinai, director of archives at KKL-JNF. “KKL-JNF has documented the development of the land since the early 20th century, and our collection holds many treasures. This is a wonderful opportunity to wish all of Israel a happy, peaceful and safe Sukkot holiday.”


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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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