Tuesday, October 22, 2024

10/22 Links Pt2: How the Media Has Globalized the Intifada; The Weaponization of Medical Misinformation and the War in Gaza

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: How the Media Has Globalized the Intifada
Everyone has their own reasons for distrusting major media, so Gallup’s latest polling isn’t surprising. The new survey finds trust in media at a low point, tying the nadir it reached in 2016. And although modern media giants recoil at the suggestion that they have only themselves to blame, an honest rendering of history reveals that simple explanation to be the accurate one.

Take, for example, an issue with as much resonance today as a century ago: conflict in the Middle East. Reading Yardena Schwartz’s superb, meticulous and hauntingly detailed account of the 1929 Hebron Massacre—Ghosts of a Holy War, which was published earlier this month—I was struck by some of its minor sections on the role of the media then and now. This isn’t the focus of the book, which knowledgeably traces the causes and legacy of the massacre that wiped out a millennia-old Jewish community in its place of birth and set the mold for the next hundred years of Arab-Israeli conflict. But it is a key part of the story.

And it is the part of the story that highlights a test that media companies passed in 1929 but continually fail today. Reversing those failures, as the book shows, is a matter of life and death for Jews around the world.

The Hebron Massacre, which set the stage for everything that followed it, was part of a Palestine-wide campaign of violent riots. The prime mover of these riots was deliberate incitement by Arab leaders, specifically the Al-Aqsa Blood Libel—the lie that Jews were going to seize the mosque compound built by imperial Muslim conquerors atop the site of the ancient Jewish temple as a demonstration of supremacy over the land’s original inhabitants.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the first Palestinian Arab nationalist leader (and later well-paid Nazi recruiter and envoy to the Muslim world), was Jerusalem’s grand mufti and had been chipping away at Jewish prayer rights at the Western Wall. Contradicting the city’s own official Islamic guides to the area, Hajj Amin began claiming that the Western Wall was a Muslim site, not a Jewish one. British suppression of Jewish prayer services gave the mufti the opening he needed to widen the propaganda war and mobilize a pogrom. The mostly Arab police force either stood by or joined the slaughter.

The gruesome scenes, as Schwartz notes, would be echoed on Oct. 7, 2023, the next time the Jews in their homeland would be subject to that level of barbarity on such a scale.

The British response to Hebron was to further empower Hajj Amin and the Arabs of the Mandate while arresting Jewish self-defense volunteers and restricting Jewish immigration. Thus rewarded, Hajj Amin’s Palestinian nationalists had established a blueprint they would return to time and again, and the contours of the conflict were set.
The Weaponization of Medical Misinformation and the War in Gaza
In the images from the New York Times story, a bullet appears to rest within the skull and neck of a child. The damage inflicted by any bullet is dependent on the mass and the speed of the bullet. As a rule, the higher the kinetic energy, the higher the wounding capacity and lethality. Any Increase in mass and velocity of the bullet will result in a higher kinetic energy. However, for practical purposes, there is always a limit on how high the mass and the speed can be for any weapon to remain portable.

The IDF uses the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO cartridge. The bullet fired from this cartridge is very light and designed to inflict damage by fragmentation within the tissue (terminal ballistics). To attain this, this light bullet must strike the target at a very high velocity. The bullet has different variants, each designed to fulfill an intended purpose (antipersonnel, barrier penetration, tracer, etc.).

The muzzle velocity of the 5.56 mm round, when fired from the standard rifles used by the IDF, like the American-made M4 or Israeli-made IWI X95 (Tavor), depending on the barrel length and the variant of bullet, is between 2,900 and 3,100 f/sec. The capability of the bullet to fragment decreases significantly when the bullet speed decreases below 2,500 ft/sec, which is approximately 150 and 200 yards of travel in the air. However, a bullet traveling at that speed is very likely to still pass through an adult human torso and not get lodged within the tissue.

The bullets in the radiograph showed minimal to no deformation and were lodged in the soft tissue. This would suggest they were likely fired from a long distance, possibly at least 500 yards. However, beyond 300 yards, the accuracy of such a light bullet, like the 5.56 mm, is seriously compromised and can be affected even by minimal wind. While it is true that accurate shots with 5.56 x 45 mm bullets are still possible at long distances, this requires a very steady platform and exact calculations of distance to target and wind speed and direction. These conditions are far from those encountered in a war scenario, where rapid target acquisition while avoiding being shot at tends to be the norm.

Although it is technically possible to shoot a small target the size of a child’s head at a distance for the bullet to remain lodged within the soft tissues, to do this consistently, as the authors suggest, is extremely unlikely, if not impossible particularly when considering multiple other variables, like the fact that a child is doubtful to remain stationary, wind conditions in an urban environment, and the expectation of incoming fire.

If one assumes by an extraordinary circumstance that a fired bullet should lodge within the head of a child, it cannot be known with certainty who fired that bullet and why. The IDF uses the standard NATO rifle that shoots a 5.56-round. Hamas favors an AK rifle, but some variants also fire a 5.56 bullet. Also, on occasion, Hamas has been able to obtain NATO-style weapons. So-called celebratory gunfire is the shooting of a bullet directly into the air in celebration. Such practices are known to occur in parts of the Middle East. In the US, celebratory gunfire is generally illegal because it can be associated with severe injuries, including head injuries from falling bullets.

For the healthcare worker in Gaza, politics are prevalent. Israel has just barred six medical NGOs from operating in Gaza. One of these groups, the Palestinian American Medical Association, had members in the New York Times report. No one disputes that children are being injured and killed in Gaza. Still, healthcare workers ceased to be effective advocates for health and safety when they speculated or lied about the nature of injuries they claimed to encounter. Medical accounts of injuries and deaths in an active war zone are critically valuable in making sense of the risks to the civilian population in the battle space. Medical personnel risk acting as purveyors of disinformation when departing from impartial accounting.

One cannot imagine the shooting of innocent children is in the strategic interest of the IDF. Further, the ballistic facts make such targeting impossible. The medical profession must be unbiased. The banning of medical NGOs might be the final straw after a series of pernicious NGO-generated propaganda. In this war, the patients are the losers. The media, with a publish now, retract later approach, has created confusion in the desperate pursuit of a story. Now, more than ever, a calm and impartial appraisal on the part of healthcare and the media is desperately needed. When the war ends, as it indeed will, an accounting of the facts by combatants, including Hamas and its enablers, will seek to identify any crimes committed, and punishment will follow crime accordingly.
Christine Rosen: Mao-Maoing the News Anchors
The CBS meltdown is notable for a few reasons. First, we learned that CBS News personnel (with the rare exception of legal correspondent Jan Crawford, who defended Dokoupil’s tough questioning) are more conversant in the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as the popular mental-health tropes of trauma and phobia, than they are in the common standards of professional journalism.

Second, despite some small signs of sanity in recent years, mainstream media clearly have not yet retreated from “peak woke” madness. It was new but unsurprising information that CBS News employs a Race and Culture Unit, distinct from the network’s traditional Standards and Practices division, with a mission as Orwellian as its name. The unit, created in the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd four years ago, boasts that it has a “four-pronged role at CBS News and stations as a reviewer, an incubator, a producer and a library.”

Its “primary role” is the one it exercised in the Dokoupil–Coates fracas, and that was to “review”—which sounds innocuous but is in fact anything but. The unit functions “in concert with the CBS News Standards and Ethics department to ensure all stories have the proper context, tone and intention.” This includes working “with CBS News network shows, the streaming network and stations by reviewing scripts and screeners as well as providing input in the ideation stage of story ideas.”

The Race and Culture Unit is itself part of a broader “Content for Change” program sponsored by CBS News’s corporate parent, Paramount Global. That program is described as “a global companywide, cross-brand initiative that seeks to use the power of the company’s content creation ecosystem to break down the narratives that enable intolerance, hurtful stereotypes, and systemic racism to exist and grow.”

If the Dokoupil incident is any guide, while CBS News is intent on preventing “systemic racism” from gaining purchase, it has no problem seeing journalistic standards wither. Amid the Dokoupil meltdown, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes. A short social-media clip of the interview featured an answer by Harris to a question about Israel and Gaza. But when the full interview aired, a different answer by Harris was used—prompting questions about whether CBS had edited her remarks to make her response better. According to CBS’s own standards, “Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response.”

And yet, that appears to be what CBS has done—and it’s doubtful any of its staffers objected. The once-hallowed network is no longer known for its reporting but for its falsehoods, staff tantrums, selective editing, story suppression, tone-policing, and tape-splicing.

The chief of Paramount Global, Shari Redstone, clearly is not with her own company’s program. She told reporters that Dokoupil “did a great job with that interview” and provided “a role model of what civil discourse is,” adding, “I was very proud of the work that he did.”

She could make changes at CBS News that reflect her views by disbanding the Race and Culture Unit and punishing the chiefs of the division for their surrender to the Maoist DEI regime that was determined to punish Dokoupil…but she just sold the place.

As for Coates, he told a podcast host that he might well have participated in October 7 himself had he been a resident of Gaza. So who’s to say he might not have murdered Jews and raped Jews and kidnapped Jews and burned Jews alive by the thousands?

That would seem to warrant a follow-up question, no?


How post-colonialism is fuelling antisemitic protests across the West: Obaid Omer for Inside Policy
Post-colonialism activists accused Israel of being a vassal of the US while at the same time claiming that Jewish interests held dangerous sway over American politics. By the 1990s, animosity toward Israel among the extreme left had turned to outright hostility in the US and the West in general.

In addition, academics and activists began to inject the concept of “intersectionality” into their teaching, with critical race theory and other ideologies intertwining with post-colonial theory. In this framework, European colonization was inherently evil. By extension, Israel, as a “colonizer state,” deserved to be dismantled “by any means necessary.”

The October 7 terror attacks that saw Hamas use to rape, murder, and kidnapping as tools of “resistance” caused the mask to slip off post-colonialism. To post-colonialists, Hamas terrorists are freedom fighters whose every action, however vile, is justified. This insidious ideology, fuelled by outside agitators and even authoritarian regimes like Iran, Russia, and China, has infected college campus and cities across Canada and the United States.

Ironically, pro-Palestinian activists regularly ignore evidence of Arab colonization (such as the building of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of a Jewish temple in the seventh to eighth centuries) while calling Israel an apartheid state that warrants destruction. To them, violence is a necessary tool to achieve decolonization and “globalize the Intifada.” And Israel isn’t the only democracy in their sights. Adherents of post-colonialism also view Canada and the US as illegitimate colonial projects to be dismantled.

A lack of political leadership
With antisemitism rising across the West, too many political leaders, especially on the progressive left, are playing both sides of the issue. Post-colonial theory has impaired their vision: they see the Middle East solely in black and white. To them, Islam is a subjugated religion, and the Palestinians are an oppressed people, ruled by Jewish colonizers.

This leads to an abdication of leadership when we need it the most. Consider the situation that arose in 2021 during pro-Palestinian protests in Montreal and Toronto. When clashes broke out between protesters and counter-protesters, Jewish Canadians were chased through the streets by a baying mob. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first reaction, however, was not to condemn the antisemitism on display. Rather, he urged Canadians to be wary of Islamophobia. This has been a common refrain both leading up to, and after, the October 7 terror attacks.

The Trudeau Liberals and the NDP under Jagmeet Singh are both heavily influenced by critical social justice ideologies, including post-colonial theory. This ideological capture causes them to ignore the ideologies’ inherent antisemitism. Repeatedly, the federal government has shown its bad judgement in this area – from hiring Laith Marouf as an “anti-racism” expert, to selecting Birju Dattani as the head of the Human Rights Commission.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, Islamic fundamentalists are using the ideology of post-colonialism to impose theocratic rule and deny their citizens of basic human rights and freedoms. These values, treasured in most of the Western world, are derided as attempts at colonization. Too many progressive academics in the West support this dangerous view.

If Canadians are serious about combatting antisemitism, they must hold their political leaders to account. Canada must reject post-colonialism and champion human rights and equality (rather than equity) for all. We must also support Israel, which continues to fight courageously for its survival, while surrounded by a sea of Islamist nations – including many countries that were themselves colonized by Arabs centuries.
Redefining evil: How postmodern ideologies twist biblical morality
In the realms of war and peace, the liberal world has replaced the distinction between aggressors (bad) and defenders (good) with an ideological litmus test that instead divides the world between ostensible “colonizers” (bad) and victims of colonization, who are automatically good. Regardless of the massive destruction and atrocities that the so-called victims commit, such as murder, rape, and other forms of brutality, they are treated like children, and cannot be held morally accountable for their actions.

Not coincidentally, this framework only recognizes Western colonialists and their “Global South” or “people of color” victims. For example, Arab colonialism, which originated in Saudi Arabia and spread throughout the world under the flag of Islam, as well as its victims, are erased.

In this false morality and reversal of good and evil, the Jewish people and Israel are absurdly relegated to the category of Western colonizers, and Palestinian Arabs are the unquestioned victims who cannot be held accountable for their actions. Seventy-six years of war and terrorism, leading up to the atrocities of October 7, are relabeled as “resistance,” and whatever Israel does to defend its citizens against these horrors is immediately and mindlessly twisted into “war crimes,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.” Military strength used against the evils of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran is merely evidence of Israel’s “violations of international law.”

For these reasons, Western liberals are blind to evil that is amplified by officials who control the United Nations, the international pseudo-courts, and the powerful industry of nongovernmental organizations marching under the flag of human rights, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Among many, the illusion that these institutions remain the cornerstones of a “rules-based international order” continues to be unquestioned despite the blatant evidence that, for many years, they have been leading sources of hate propaganda and antisemitism.

When four presidents of prominent universities recently told a US congressional committee that categorizing the mob attacks and intimidation targeting Jews as acts of hatred and antisemitism “depended on the context,” they were not merely pretending to be naive innocents to avoid responsibility for their repugnant inaction. They were also repeating the postmodern blindness to the essential difference between good and evil and between justice and injustice.

These distinctions, unambiguously presented in the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible and maintained until the advent of “enlightened liberalism,” are essential to a moral human society.
Jonathan Tobin: Affirming the ‘genocide’ smear against Israel fuels antisemitism
Yet the interesting thing about these two incidents is that neither the Times nor any of the other liberal mainstream outlets had any interest in reporting Harris’s comments about Gaza.

Given the openly partisan nature of the coverage of the election in the legacy media, it’s not unreasonable to speculate about the reason for suppressing the story. It was likely motivated by the knowledge that there are far more votes to be lost by the Democrats among pro-Israel centrists than to be gained on the anti-Israel left.

That was backed up by another Times story labeled “news analysis” in which they made the case that Harris would be unlikely to break from Biden on Israel and Gaza, and take a harder line against the Jewish state as her Republican opponents assert.

Yet the buzz on the left in recent days is all about its dissatisfaction with Harris’s intermittent attempts to take a centrist position on a wide range of issues, including illegal immigration, crime and the economy, on which Trump is perceived to have an advantage.

Curiously, the anti-Israel left seems unpersuaded by Harris’s expressions of sympathy for their position, as social media has been flooded with posts excoriating her for being unwilling to falsely claim that Israel is committing “genocide.” Whether that means that they—and Arab and Muslim-American voters in Michigan—won’t vote for her is a question that won’t be answered until November.

But their anger at her desire to have it both ways on the issue seems to demonstrate not merely how their ideological rigidity seems influenced by deeply entrenched attitudes of Jew-hatred. It also shows how oblivious they are to the stands of an administration that, while not breaking completely with Israel, has been determined to try to undermine its efforts to defeat Iran’s terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Throughout the year since the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel, Harris has been clear that she wanted the war in Gaza to end, regardless of whether it meant that Hamas would not be disarmed and left in power. She supports Israel’s right to self-defense but seems to oppose any exercise of that right. In the spring, she claimed to have studied the maps, and any Israeli action to eliminate Hamas’s remaining military formations in Rafah would be unacceptable and might lead to a U.S. arms cutoff. She repeated that recently when she said that the death last week of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar—in Rafah—is the latest reason to end the war.

Though loathe to take action against Israel that might hurt Harris’s chances of defeating Trump, the administration’s foreign-policy team has not been shy about their desire to end the Jewish state’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranian terror proxy that continues to fire on northern Israel. They also want to prevent the Israeli government from striking sensitive Iranian targets like the Islamic Republic’s oil or nuclear facilities.

The fact that Israeli plans to attack Iran were leaked by Washington by the White House, intentionally or not, is also part of a series of incidents that calls into question whether Jerusalem can trust its American ally.

This is why the significance of Harris’s comments about the beliefs of Israel-haters is not so much a question of misspeaking. Rather, it’s linked to the way she and President Joe Biden have been speaking out of both sides of their mouths about the post-Oct. 7 war for the past year.
Reject Israel ‘genocide’ charge ‘directly,’ AJC urges Harris
Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called on U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to more forcefully denounce the claim that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza on Monday, following footage circulated of the Democratic nominee for president appearing to agree with an anti-Israel heckler.

“The protester’s charge of ‘genocide’ is an outrageous and dangerous lie,” Deutch wrote. “While I appreciate the Harris campaign official stating that ‘this is not her position,’ I urge Vice President Harris to forcefully reject the charge of genocide directly.”

On Thursday, a heckler confronted Harris at a campaign event for students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and accused her of having invested “billions of dollars in genocide.”

“What about genocide?” the man said, as security removed him, “19,000 children are dead and you won’t call it a genocide.”

“What he’s talking about, it’s real,” Harris replied. “I respect his voice.”

Video clips of the exchange went viral on social media on Saturday after they were first reported by the New York Post.

Harris campaign officials have denied that Harris was accusing Israel of committing genocide.

In response to the anti-Israel protester’s charge that Israel is engaged in “genocide,” a Harris campaign official told JNS “that is not the view of the Biden administration or the vice president.”
CAIR to honor outgoing Rep. Bowman with 2024 Champion of Justice award
The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced on Oct. 18 that it plans to give an award to outgoing Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who lost his primary in June for New York’s 16th Congressional District.

A frequent critic of Israel, Bowman is slated to receive CAIR’s 2024 Champion of Justice award on Nov. 22, when he is also scheduled to deliver a keynote at the group’s 30th anniversary gala.

CAIR, which blamed Israel for being attacked by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, said the congressman “has dedicated his time in Congress to advocating for racial justice, civil rights, economic fairness and a just foreign policy, including in the Middle East.”

“He was one of the first members of Congress with the moral courage to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and has consistently condemned the Israeli government’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people,” CAIR said. “AIPAC spent more than $14 million to silence his voice. In response, Rep. Bowman vowed to continue advocating for the liberation of Palestine.”


US official praises Palestinian Authority’s financial assessment
Wally Adeyemo, the deputy U.S. secretary of the treasury, spoke on Monday with Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, per a U.S. readout.

The U.S. and Palestinian officials addressed “security and economic stability in the West Bank, as well as the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to improve its anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regime,” per the U.S. readout. (The Biden administration and others refer to Judea and Samaria as the West Bank.)

Adeyemo “stressed the importance of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from raising, using and moving funds in the West Bank,” according to the Treasury Department. He also noted the authority’s “progress on strengthening its countering the financing of terrorism regime,” including “completing key milestones” in assessing “risks within its jurisdiction and bolstering effective compliance with international standards,” according to the readout.

The U.S. official also “commended the Palestinian Authority for completing a risk assessment of their financial system” and for scheduling an evaluation of its banking system.

“These are both critical steps for ensuring financial linkages between the Palestinian territories and the international financial system continue,” the Treasury Department added. “They discussed the importance of the correspondent banking relationships between Israeli and Palestinian banks to the security and economic stability of the region.”

According to a 2024 U.S. State Department report, the “Palestinian public views favoritism (locally known as wasta) and nepotism as the most common forms of corruption according to a September 2022 poll by the Coalition for Integrity and Accountability, the Palestinian chapter of Transparency International.”


The Israel Guys: The Fake Palestinian Population in the West Bank | Episode 4
In episode four of this series, the five hosts at The Israel Guys take you on location in Judea to show the reality of the demography in the West Bank. Are the radical, extremist settlers really taking over land in Judea and Samaria, whilst forcing Palestinian-Arabs out? Or is the reality on the ground much different? Watch today’s episode to find out.

In this stunning episode, you will hear details and statistics never before heard or seen in the mainstream media. We know you will be shocked to find out that everything you’ve been told about the “West Bank”, two-state solution, and so much more is propaganda and lies.

While skepticism about the feasibility of the two-state solution is growing in Israel and amongst clear-headed thinkers around the world, support for Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is growing. We’ll let you watch today’s episode, however, to decide what you think. Be sure to post your opinion in the comment section!


Banned from France, Israeli defense companies welcomed warmly in DC
As the three-day Association of the United States Army annual meeting and exhibition wound down on Oct. 16 in Washington, word spread among Israeli defense companies that Emmanuel Macron, the French president, intended to ban them from the upcoming Euronaval defense fair outside Paris.

A spokesman for a major Israeli defense company told JNS on Wednesday at the Washington event that France’s decision to bar Israeli companies “is not surprising,” referring further questions to the Israeli Defense Ministry. A ministry representative at the event declined to comment.

That same day, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, said Macron’s “actions are a disgrace to the French nation and the values of the free world, which he claims to uphold.”

“The decision to discriminate against Israeli defense industries in France a second time aids Israel’s enemies during war. This builds on the decision to place an arms embargo on the Jewish state,” Gallant stated. “France has adopted, and is consistently implementing, a hostile policy towards the Jewish people. We will continue defending our nation against enemies on seven different fronts, and fighting for our future—with or without France.”

Paris also uninvited Israeli companies to the larger Eurosatory exhibit in June. A French court overturned that decision, but it was too late for the Jewish state to participate. The court further ruled that it was discriminatory to bar Israeli citizens from the show unless they signed a waiver declaring they were attending in personal rather than official capacities.

At the event in Washington, Israeli defense sector leaders told JNS that they felt welcome in the United States.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is “very proud of our relationships and very happy to present our products that help protect the forces of democratic countries,” Yoav Turgeman, the company’s CEO, told JNS.

“Unlike perhaps Eurosatory—a very unfortunate event—we are very, very welcome here,” Turgeman said. “We are received in a very good way.” He cited the “quantity and degree” of potential customers who visited the company’s display.

“The powers in the world know how to appreciate this,” he said.


Ireland eyes revival of bill to ban trade with Israeli settlements
Ireland’s government is seeking to introduce a bill restricting trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank after it said a UN court decision freed Dublin to make trade decisions independently of the European Union.

The “Occupied Territories Bill” was first tabled in 2018 by an independent lawmaker and despite receiving broad support in Ireland’s parliament, the government said it could not bring it forward because the European Union, not member nations, is responsible for the bloc’s trade policy.

However, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said on Tuesday that an advisory opinion by the United Nations’ highest court in July — asserting that Israel’s presence in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (despite the military’s withdrawal from the Strip in 2005) is illegal — had changed the context of how the government might move forward on the issue.

“Trade is an exclusive EU competence and so the government’s focus has been on achieving action at the EU level,” Martin said in a statement.

“The Attorney General has clarified that if this is not possible, there are grounds in EU law allowing states to take action at a national level. It is in that context that the government will now look again at the Occupied Territories Bill.”

He said the bill will be reviewed and amendments prepared in order to bring it into line with EU law and Ireland’s constitution, adding that a range of complex policy and legal issues remained to be resolved.


German politician resigns from the Left Party over handling of antisemitism
Henriette Quade, a long-time member of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), has resigned, citing the party’s insufficient response to antisemitism. Quade, who has been a member of the Left Party for 24 years and a deputy in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament since 2011, will continue to serve as an independent member of parliament, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In a statement shared on her website and on X/Twitter), Quade criticized what she described as a “culture of silence” regarding antisemitism within the Left Party, arguing that an uncompromising fight against antisemitism is not possible “in and with this party.”

Her resignation was triggered by a recent resolution passed at the federal party conference in Halle, which called for a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas but failed to mention antisemitism. Quade criticized the resolution for omitting any reference to “murderous antisemitism,” despite its focus on alleged violations of international law by the Israeli army.

“The resolution did not mention, with a single sentence, the murderous antisemitism that has been urging for the destruction of Israel since the first day of its existence,” Quade stated, as reported by Spiegel Online.

She also took issue with the party’s call to stop weapons deliveries to Israel, arguing that such a policy would leave Israel defenseless. “As long as Israel is militarily threatened, it can only avert attacks through military force,” Quade added, likening the party’s stance to its policy on Ukraine, which she described as “a policy of letting people die.”
'Since the Oslo Accords, we've been obsessed with Israel': How Israel-Norway relations fell apart
It wasn’t always this way. The collapse of Israel-Norway relations - as illustrated in recent months with Norway’s recognition of a Palestinian state and Israel’s diplomatic blitz against Norway – is reminiscent of an ugly divorce, each partner taking out their years of pent-up anger and resentment on the other.

It began as a love story between two countries who found common ground, caring for one another and optimistically trying to bring peace to the Middle East. Three decades later, the experiment blew up in dissolution.

“I think Norway’s unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state is an admission of failure,” says Hilde Henriksen Waage (65) of Oslo University, a leading expert on Israel-Norway relations and the Oslo process in Norway.

“After the Cold War, in Norway, there was a desire to build up an image to make it stand out and remind the US that we’re here, that we’re more than a border with Russia and that contrary to our geographical location, we’re in the middle of the action. It was decided we’d offer the world peace. And it’s failed. Not only is there no peace, but things have gotten much worse. And the finger’s being pointed entirely at Israel’s current government.”

Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Kravik views Norway’s unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state somewhat differently: “We did it to advance peace and recognition between Israel and Palestine. This is something we’re committed to," he says.

"We saw that the Oslo Accords took negative directions that have created a lack of security for both Israelis and Palestinians. So, we were forced to think differently about how to embolden the moderate elements, weakened in this brutal conflict. Both sides deserve peace, but there’ll be no peace without a two-state solution. And as the war in Gaza rages on, we have to preserve the two-state solution alternative.”

Norway took another step against Israel when it supported an arms embargo against Israel at the UN, while most European countries (including Sweden) abstained. Until the mid-'70s, the Norwegian public, along with the country’s political organizations, were clear Israel supporters.


Two pro-Israel activists arrested for violent counterprotest at UCLA last spring
Two pro-Israel activists have been arrested in the latest fallout from a violent clash at UCLA’s pro-Palestinian encampment last spring.

On Friday, Adam Tfayli, student body president of the University of California, Los Angeles, announced on Instagram that two people were arrested on felony charges first made in early August, and have preliminary hearings scheduled. The statement also said an additional two people have active warrants for arrest — one on a felony warrant and one that was initially charged as a felony but has since been reclassified as a misdemeanor. There is a fifth case currently being reviewed.

The statement did not include names, but the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper, identified the arrested suspects as Eyal Shalom and Malachi Joshua Marlan-Librett. UCLA and campus police did not return requests for comment.

The arrests came nearly six months after a group of pro-Israel activists — including Shalom and Marlan-Librett — attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at the school on April 30. The fracas led to numerous physical altercations as demonstrators threw objects and fireworks at the pro-Palestinian activists. Security guards were present at the scene but police did not clear the area until hours after the clashes began.

The violence from pro-Israel activists drew national attention, particularly in a climate where Jewish students at campuses across the country said that pro-Palestinian encampments created a hostile and antisemitic atmosphere. Classes were canceled at UCLA following the incident, and condemnations poured in, including from local Jewish leaders and Jewish UCLA students and faculty. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called the violence “absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable.”


Anti-Israel protesters arrested after occupying University of Minnesota building
Police arrested around a dozen anti-Israel protesters who briefly occupied a University of Minnesota administrative building and blocked staff from being able to leave, the school said Monday.

Demonstrators demanding the school divest from Israel entered Morrill Hall on Monday afternoon, using furniture to barricade doors and causing other damage before police were called in to remove them, the university said in a statement.

“Once inside the building, protesters began spray painting, including covering lenses of all internal security cameras, breaking interior windows, and barricading the building’s entrance and exit points,” the school said. “A number of staff were working in the building at the time, and several people were not able to exit, with some being unable to exit the building for an extended period of time.”

Authorities said 11 people were arrested inside the building, though the Minnesota Daily student newspaper put the number of arrests at 13, citing police. A reporter for the paper was also briefly detained, it said.

Merlin Van Alstein, an activist with Students for a Democratic Society, said about 30 protesters had occupied Morrill Hall, with a larger group gathered outside. Demonstrators demanded that the university divest from Israel and repeal its political neutrality agreement.

During the takeover, the group symbolically renamed the building “Halimy Hall,” in remembrance of 19-year-old Palestinian TikTok creator Medo Halimy who died in August in an apparent Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military said it was not aware of the strike that killed Halimy.


CBS Producer in Gaza Has History of Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Commentary: ‘Are Jews Really Human Like Us?’
In early October, to mark a year of war in Gaza, CBS News turned its cameras at one of its own: Gaza-based producer Marwan Al Ghoul.

Because foreign journalists are not allowed in Gaza on their own, CBS relies on Al Ghoul to report on what’s happening on the ground there, anchor Norah O’Donnell told viewers.

Over the last year, Al Ghoul has reported from the rubble of bombed-out buildings and chaos of overwhelmed hospitals. He’s interviewed aid workers and displaced families. He’s “very angry” about what’s happened to his homeland, Al Ghoul told foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer in the video, adding that “like anybody, we want to be free.”

Palmer called Al Ghoul’s resolve “simply astonishing.” Another correspondent said that Al Ghoul is “much loved here at CBS News.” One CBS editor called Al Ghoul “an incredibly courageous man and a fantastic reporter.”

But CBS News leaders are not answering questions about Al Ghoul’s public views on the war and his often controversial comments about Israel and Jews. In Facebook posts, Al Ghoul has displayed a clear anti-Israel bias and has regularly alleged that Israel is engaged in a genocide. He and his son, a cameraman, appear to have praised terror attacks against civilians and even questioned the humanity of Jews. Al Ghoul’s son identifies himself on social media as a CBS worker. CBS denies that the network employs or pays Al Ghoul’s son.

CBS’s October 7 story featuring Al Ghoul aired while the network’s executives were dealing with the fallout from another episode involving the Israel-Gaza conflict. This month, it was revealed that CBS News leaders reprimanded morning show co-anchor Tony Dokoupil, who is Jewish, for his pointed questioning of Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a new anti-Israel book that claims the country was “built on ethnocracy” and “apartheid.” CBS leaders alleged that the “tone” of Dokoupil’s interview didn’t meet “the legacy of neutrality and objectivity that is CBS News,” according to news reports.

Critics say reprimanding Dokoupil for a fair but aggressive interview of an Israel critic while ignoring its own producer’s history of anti-Israel commentary smacks of a double standard.

“It just seems to us that CBS is willing to ignore or excuse antisemitism from its staff while penalizing journalists who challenge anti-Israel narratives,” said Jonah Cohen, a spokesman for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

CAMERA, a pro-Israel media-monitoring organization, has been leading the effort to expose Al Ghoul’s commentary and what it sees as CBS’s hypocrisy. National Review has reviewed the Al Ghoul Facebook posts CAMERA flagged, which pre-date the October 7 attack, as well as other seemingly one-sided posts he has made over the last year.

CAMERA has also flagged several social-media posts made by Al Ghoul’s son, Fares Marwan Alghoul, who has served as his father’s cameraman in Gaza. The son has made several posts over the years cheering terrorist attacks and praising terrorists.


Wikipedia's page on Zionism is partly edited by an anti-Zionist
Wikipedia’s page on “Zionism” is being partly edited by a user with strongly anti-Zionist views, The Jerusalem Post discovered on Monday.

The anonymous user, DMH223344, has re-framed the content of the page so that Zionism is defined as a colonialist movement, and has cited multiple anti-Israel sources when providing evidence for the claims.

Actor and activist Roi Dolev first shone light on the issue in a post to his Instagram, after researching DMH223344.

At the time of writing, when googled, the Wikipedia definition of Zionism is that “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinians as possible” something that was defined in part by DMH223344.

The Post found that the user was suspended on October 9 2024 from editing the Zionism page, “for violating the one-revert rule at Zionism (revert 1 & revert 2) after previous warnings.”

The one revert rule is Wikipedia’s ban on editing wars, which happens when multiple editors revert and un-revert each other’s work.

According to Callanecc, the user that initiated the suspension, DMH223344 had “already been warned twice in a few months about edit warring and 1RR.”


Seth Frantzman: Will death of Turkish cleric Gulen lead to a more peaceful Turkey?
Turkish cleric Muhammed Fethullah Gulen died in Pennsylvania this week. Gulen and his movement were accused by Turkey’s ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) of attempting a coup against Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. The coup attempt came at a time of transition in Turkey and was used by the government as an excuse to purge hundreds of thousands of political opponents from all parts of society.

It also led the Turkish state to use all means abroad to crack down on institutions and people linked to Gulen. This included extrajudicial renditions around the world.

Gulen was 83 years old. The history of how the current leadership of Turkey came to view Gulen and his movement as a “terrorist” group is not entirely clear. What is clear is that the AKP Party has dominated Turkish politics for the last two decades and it has thrived on finding various enemies along the way that it then accuses of plots so that it can then purge them. These enemies have includes accusations against secular officers in the military, as well as the Gulen movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party.

An opening for Turkey?
The death of Gulen could serve as an opening in Turkey because the ruling party may be less paranoid now. It’s not clear if the death will lead to an opening, but let’s review how we got here in Turkey.

Turkey’s current ruling party first won elections in 2002. Because Turkey has a history of coups that have been used to keep the right-wing Islamist elements out of power, the AKP moved carefully at first. It wanted to transform Turkey into a more conservative Islamic power. It wanted to reorient itself from being pro-Western and pro-NATO to being close to Russia, Iran, China, and also leading both the Turkish world and the Islamic world.

In the beginning the AKP sought to have a policy of “zero problems” with Turkey’s neighbors. This enabled the party to focus domestically. Gulen and his institutions were not seen as rivals initially. Instead, the leadership sought to crack down on secular opposition elements.

This meant going after the secular-nationalist media and targeting universities, students, and NGOs linked to the West. This was a model picked up from Putin’s consolidation of power in Russia.
Turkey's Halkbank not immune from US prosecution in Iran sanctions case
A US appeals court on Tuesday rejected a request by Turkey's state-owned Halkbank HALKB.IS for immunity from US criminal charges that it helped Iran evade American sanctions. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said it found no basis in common law for a foreign state-owned corporation to be absolutely immune from US prosecution for alleged criminal conduct related to its commercial activities.
US charges IRGC official, 3 others in plot to assassinate dissident journalist
The United States has issued fresh charges over an attempted Tehran plot to kidnap and assassinate an Iranian-American journalist in New York, and has indicted an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official among others in the case, according to a court document on Tuesday.

Ruhollah Bazghandi and three other men were charged in the updated indictment against those accused of trying to abduct and kill Masih Alinejad.

The Iranian opposition activist and journalist has been living in exile in New York City. Her identity is not in court papers, but she confirmed to The Associated Press that she was the intended target.

Bazghandi and the other newly-charged suspects are based in Iran and remain at large, prosecutors said.

They said that Bazghandi’s internet activity, as well as that of the three other individuals whose names were unsealed on Tuesday, pointed to their involvement in multiple assassination plots.

“Today’s indictment exposes the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime,” said US Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray.

US prosecutors have previously charged other suspects in the case, including Khalid Mehdiyev, who was arrested for having a rifle outside Alinejad’s Brooklyn home, and Rafat Amirov. Both are in US custody and have pleaded not guilty to murder-for-hire charges.


Beloved author and vicious antisemite Roald Dahl gets complex treatment in new play
Hailed as “one of the greatest storytellers” of the 20th century, Roald Dahl wrote some of Britain’s most beloved children’s books, sprinkled with magical characters like “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Matilda,” and “Danny, the Champion of the World.”

He was also a vicious antisemite.

That paradox rests at the heart of Jewish playwright Mark Rosenblatt’s new play, “Giant,” which opened last month at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

It is set in the summer of 1983 when Dahl — newly divorced and recently engaged to his mistress — finds himself plunged into a media storm. With his new book “The Witches” weeks from publication, the Welsh-born novelist had authored a review of a photobook about the 1982 Lebanon War.

“In June 1941 I happened to be in, of all places, Palestine, flying with the RAF against the Vichy French and the Nazis,” the piece began. “Hitler happened to be in Germany and the gas chambers were being built and the mass slaughter of the Jews was beginning. Our hearts bled for the Jewish men, women and children, and we hated the Germans.”

“Exactly forty-one years later, in June 1982, the Israeli forces were streaming northwards out of what used to be Palestine into Lebanon, and the mass slaughter of the inhabitants began. Our hearts bled for the Lebanese and Palestinian men, women and children, and we all started hating the Israelis,” Dahl continued.

“Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world and then, in the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion. It is as though a group of much-loved nuns in charge of an orphanage had suddenly turned around and started murdering all the children.”

And that wasn’t all. “The authentic tales of horror and bestiality throughout this book,” he wrote, “make one wonder in the end what sort of people these Israelis are. It is like the good old Hitler and Himmler times all over again.”

As for the United States, Dahl said, it was “so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions” that it “dare not defy” Israel.

The only way for Jews outside Israel to redeem themselves, Dahl argued, was for them to become anti-Israeli. “But do they have the conscience,” he asked. “And do they, I wonder, have the guts.”

The review was rightly savaged in the press. Under the headline “An affront to decency,” the historian Paul Johnson labeled it “the most disgraceful item to appear in a respectable British publication for a very long time.”
New Jersey defamation suit to proceed in case of Jewish teacher smeared online
A case can move forward to restore the reputation of Tamar Herman, a veteran teacher in the South Orange-Maplewood School District in New Jersey, after online accusations by Olympic fencer and author Ibtihaj Muhammad that she discriminated against a Muslim second-grade student by asking her to remove her hijab.

The Lawfare Project announced on Monday that the New Jersey Appellate Division had rejected a motion for dismissal and upheld the defamation lawsuit the group had filed in support of Herman.

“These accusations—published to Ms. Muhammad’s hundreds of thousands of social-media followers—led to widespread antisemitic attacks, physical threats and irreparable damage to Ms. Herman’s career and personal life,” the Lawfare Project stated.

“The malicious defamation campaign against Ms. Herman was a calculated, antisemitic effort to harm a respected member of the community, motivated by her Jewish identity,” said Benjamin Ryberg, COO of the Lawfare Project. “Ms. Muhammad must be held accountable for the significant trauma she has inflicted.”


Antisemitism envoy grateful for Catholic Schools’ stand against hate and bigotry
Catholic Schools NSW has jointly hosted a roundtable on antisemitism in education with Jillian Segal, Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in Australia.

Held at Australian Catholic University, the roundtable identified and assessed the challenge of antisemitism in schools, presented responses to antisemitism and discussed opportunities for future collaboration.

Led by a keynote address from Ms Segal covering her work as special envoy, the roundtable showcased successful antisemitic initiatives and programs undertaken by Sydney Catholic Schools, led by its director of religious education and evangelisation, Anthony Cleary.

Following the presentations, Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney moderated a discussion among the attendees, focusing on the various perspectives from the representative heads of various organisations.

In a show of unity, over 3000 schools were represented, including all three schooling sectors, as well as Christian, Anglican and Jewish schools, and the Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, Murat Dizdar.

Ms Segal said it was “heartening to hear around the table strong condemnation of antisemitism in our society and acknowledgement of the essential role schools have in countering it and ensuring they educate future leaders about it”.

“I am very grateful to Catholic Schools NSW for their strong and ongoing stand against hate and bigotry,” Ms Segal said.

Mr McInerney said school leaders have a “unique responsibility” to ensure that schools are welcoming and safe environments for all students”.

“We have Jewish students in all three sectors of NSW education, and today, we send a powerful message that antisemitism has no place in our schools and education is the best antidote to bigotry.”


Former boxing champ gives Israeli rescue group 100 bulletproof vests
American boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr. is donating $100,000 to buy 100 bulletproof vests for Israeli medical volunteers on the front lines, in his latest show of support for the Jewish state.

The gift was announced on Monday evening, at an annual Jerusalem concert for the United Hatzalah volunteer emergency-rescue service that raised funds for the purchase of 1,000 protective kits for its volunteers.

About 3,000 people attended the sold-out event organized by the Jerusalem-based service at the city’s International Convention Center, which included performances by Israeli singers Ishay Ribo, Gad Elbaz and Shmuel Star.

“Your presence shows that even in difficult times, we can find strength in unity,” said Eli Beer, United Hatzalah president and founder. “Let’s continue to stand together for our soldiers, our volunteers and our community.”

Mayweather, 47, from Las Vegas, is a boxing promoter and former professional boxer who competed between 1996 and 2017. He retired undefeated with a 50-0 record and won 15 major world championships spanning five weight classes from super featherweight to light middleweight.

Earlier this year, he visited Israel in a wartime solidarity trip wearing a large Star of David necklace. At the time, he dedicated a fleet of ambulances to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service.




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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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