Monday, October 28, 2024

10/28 Links Pt2: Palestinian Nationalism Uber Alles; Sally Rooney’s Literary Mob; Chicago Jewish man on way to synagogue shot by attacker shouting 'Allahu Akhbar'

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: The Peace Process Failed, but Its Bad Assumptions Live On
IV. Homo Economicus
But misunderstanding runs deeper. It is not only that we imagined the Palestinian national movement in the image of ours. We also projected our own misconceptions of human nature onto the Palestinians. We misunderstood them, in other words, in the same way that we misunderstand ourselves.

Contemporary Western elites mostly assume as a matter of course that we all want, above all, a decent job, food on the table, and a safe environment to raise our children. But when we conceive of all life in these materialistic terms, we lose the ability to imagine the human capacity for the sublime and the evil alike. And, encouraged by fuzzy-headed liberal and socialist assumptions from America, Europe, and the global NGO industry, Israelis failed to believe in their neighbors’ sinister intentions.

When, one after the other, IDF intelligence chiefs reassured us that the Palestinians are deterred because it was not in their interest to risk the economic gains we helped them achieve, it is because they project our ideas of human motivation onto them. So self-evident do their presuppositions seem that they become invisible to those who hold them.

These presuppositions serve as filters by which any contradictory information is labeled as pessimism, fear-mongering, fantasy, absurdity, or deception—and so never enters intelligence calculations. The same projections and misunderstandings predominate departments of Middle East studies throughout the West.

It was on the basis of these Western conceptions of human nature that we assumed our technology would be intimidating enough; it was this view that informed our belief that, once freed from Israeli occupation, Gazans would naturally devote their efforts to nation-building and economic betterment; it is on the basis of this outlook that we also convinced ourselves that they’ll see that perpetual peace was better than perpetual war.

And this is why we did not take seriously their theology of hate, their deep-seated racism, and the depth of their barbaric sadism.

We did not take ourselves seriously either, and so we did not understand the forces within ourselves that were now awakened.

In his masterful essay “Churchill in 1940,” Isaiah Berlin wrote that Winston Churchill did not create the fortitude that the British people displayed in their determination to fight the evil of Nazism. He only awakened something that was already in them, but that they themselves had forgotten. In a less poetic way, but with no less ferocity, Benjamin Netanyahu tapped a force within the hearts of Israeli Jews that most of us no longer remember we possessed. He did it simply and straightforwardly: he insisted on total victory from day one, and has never wavered since.

Unlike Churchill who commandeered the whole of British society, Netanyahu has had to manage the war despite opposition from much of the state and military bureaucracy, fickle coalition partners, a hostile press, and an elite that loathes him. That elite includes much of the top brass of the IDF and Shin Bet, who have more than once tried to undermine him. Instead of the unwavering support Britain received from the Roosevelt administration even before Pearl Harbor, the current U.S. government has repeatedly tried to bring about the end of Netanyahu’s term as well as an end to the war without Israeli victory. It is also undermining Israel’s long-term security with its strategy of appeasing Tehran. Notwithstanding all this, Netanyahu has persisted on the path to the victory and now Israel seems close to achieving it, perhaps even to removing the Iranian nuclear threat. That’s a breathtaking feat of statesmanship by any standard—one that most of us, myself included, did not believe was possible at all.

All the same, October 7 did happen on Netanyahu’s watch. The question of his responsibility awaits inquiry when this war is over. What he did and did not do before that day will have to be weighed against what he did since.

But the truth is that Israelis care very little about that now, which is why the attempts to pin responsibility for the disaster on the prime minister have failed to gain traction. After a string of extraordinary operational successes in the conduct of the war, and after resisting external pressure to buckle in the face of Israel’s enemies, Netanyahu is steadily rising in the polls. That’s because a solid majority in Israel understands the existential danger we are in, and so does not dream of replacing the one man who has never wavered on “total victory.”
Seth Mandel: Palestinian Nationalism Uber Alles
Fatah’s control of the PLO at this time was so consequential because it was created as an umbrella coalition of Palestinian resistance groups. The last major holdout, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had joined the prior year. Arafat took over at the perfect moment to mold the entire Palestinian national movement according to his methods. Though there would be disagreement and discord, the main point of uniting the disparate factions of the Palestinian “resistance” was to threaten the stability of Arab states that didn’t back total war with Israel.

Fight Club’s first rule was “you don’t talk about Fight Club.” The PLO’s first rule was “you only talk about destroying Israel.” Everything else gets checked at the door.

What Qaddumi’s comments meant was not that supporters of the Palestinian cause should temporarily set aside their devotion to, say, gay rights or feminism. It meant that supporters must permanently set aside their devotion to gay rights and feminism and anything else they believed. Because the true state of a leftist movement, in the Palestinian rendering, is revolution in perpetuity.

This is the danger of the primacy of Palestinian nationalism on campus and among other, mostly but not entirely progressive, activist institutions. Nothing else matters but the destruction of the power structures wherever they are. Permanent revolution means there can be no peace, no compromise. If yet another generation of activists is reared on this one rule, it will apply to everything, not just Israel or Zionism.

Finally, how to reconcile the declared Marxist and socialist bona fides of the Palestinian national movement with its issue ban, which would seem to rule out much that animates the class war? Here Qaddumi shows the cleverness of the movement. The class war exists, but the Palestinians have… invented a new class:

“Because of the evacuation of the Palestinians, Al-Fateh represents the refugees. It is the only revolutionary movement which has transcended the Arab movements, Arab parties and the Palestinian regional movements, and it has done this because it has depended on the refugee class. The bourgeois concept, on the other hand, is one of attributes.”

In other words, in the permanence of the “refugee class” is where the movement finds its greatest strength.

The “pro-Palestinian” activists in the West are not unaware of all this—or at least those who speak for them and lead them aren’t unaware. The point of all this conflict is its permanence and its wide applicability. There are, of course, people who support the establishment of a Palestinian state but who do not support open-ended violent revolution. But of the two groups, the Western activist class tends to elevate and legitimize only the more extreme one, which makes no excuses for its hypocrisies and which cannot be placated by peace and compromise.
We’re All Colonialists Now
Kirsch notes that the massacre of Jews in Israel—instantly transmitted around the world via bodycam footage taken by Hamas fighters—had the effect of reversing “the usual terms” of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. For two decades, the pattern of the conflict saw Hamas casually rocket Israeli towns near the Gaza border with little effect while Israel retaliated with lethal artillery barrages and air strikes. The asymmetry of firepower combined with a similar asymmetry in the protection of civilians left Israel largely unscathed while Palestinians bore the brunt of the Israeli response. These uneven death tolls provoked fierce criticism of Israel around the world. One might have expected, then, that a gruesome and intimate butchery of many hundreds of Israeli civilians would elicit widespread horror and condemnation. In fact, just the opposite happened. The most murderous attack against Jews since the Holocaust inspired “a larger and louder pro-Palestinian response than any previous conflict.”

How to explain this wretched state of affairs? Kirsch admits that some of the indignation toward Israel flows from traditional humanitarian concerns in response to Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, which resulted in a great many civilian casualties. But in truth, this was an afterthought. The protests against Israel erupted more or less concomitantly with the news of Jewish bloodshed, well before any Israeli military response. Over the years, it had been common to witness excitement and enthusiasm over Hamas’s exploits in Palestinian culture, or even in the political slums of Cairo and Damascus; what made this time different, Kirsch observes, is that now “it was coming from Ivy League campuses, the Democratic Socialists of America, and Black Lives Matter.”

And the forces of jihad returned the compliment to the boutique left, adopting the language of an academic seminar. Three months after its barbaric attack in the Gaza Envelope, Hamas published a memorandum in defense of the war it initiated. “The events of October 7 must be put in their broader context,” it said. That broader context, Hamas explained, is “all cases of struggle against colonialism.” Formerly committed to shedding Jewish blood on explicitly theological grounds, Hamas now fine-tuned its position to opposing Zionism as a “colonial project,” an “illegal entity.”

But the insistence that Israel is part of the same historical process that brought European settlers to various lands wrenched from indigenous peoples belies the historical record. Modern Zionist settlement in what is now Israel took off in the 1880s when Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Jewish emigration continued after World War I when the land was ruled by the British under a mandate from the League of Nations. Eventually, the Jewish state was established in a manner that displaced Arab inhabitants of Palestine but did not erase them.

Notwithstanding the post-1967 settlements on the West Bank, the State of Israel remains a speck on the regional map surrounded by a vast swath of Arab countries stretching from Morocco to Iraq. Some empire. And since 1948, the Arab population of historic Palestine has swelled from about 1.3 million to about 7.5 million. Some genocide.

Anyone with a tinge of sympathy for Zionism ought to recoil from an ideology that is a fount of historical falsehood and monstrous fantasy at the expense of the Jews. But Kirsch wisely instructs readers how the settler-colonial prism also provides low returns for Palestinians. In short, the rise of this framework generates terrible confusion about that insoluble conflict. By fashioning a radical argument against Israel’s entire existence, the settler-colonial paradigm obviates any legitimate discussion of land swaps and proposed national borders. Given the durable imbalance of power, the implications for Palestinians of remaining locked in rejectionism will be grim. Hence the beginning of wisdom for advocates of Palestinian interests is to recognize that Israel, with no “mother country” to speak of, is staying put.

Ultimately, it is not only the concept of colonialism that people fail to grasp in the modern age but the concept of war. In a century of recurrent conflict between Jews and Arabs, it is long past time for Palestinians to adjust to the reality of Jewish sovereignty. Without that, their aspirations for a better life will remain bound up in an impossible, anti-historical scheme. On Settler Colonialism is a lucid and humane warning against precisely that fate.


Lionel Shriver: Sally Rooney’s Literary Mob
Although some say we’ve passed peak woke, the modern left’s authoritarian impulse to push other people around is alive and well. It’s just that a memo must have gone out to the faithful that the agenda has switched, and now instead of black lives mattering or the climate changing, they’re all to lose their wits over Israel and stick it to the Jews. These are very obedient disciples.

Last week, some 400 writers, including Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy, signed a letter calling for a mass boycott of the Israeli publishing industry, excepting those who have denounced the “genocide” in Gaza. Now, Rooney, Roy, and their colleagues are certainly well within their rights to get exercised about the gravel pit that used to be Gaza. Because these are writers, you’d think their best route to making their feelings known would be, um, to write. After all, the impulse to form a mob is surely antithetical to the impulse to record your thoughts in text in private and to have your unique voice broadly heard. Me, I’ve never been a joiner, and I used to think my literary brethren weren’t joiners either, much less bullies. But even for writers, this is an age of aggressive groupsterism.

In addition to boycotting Israeli book festivals, literary agents, and publishers, Rooney et al. also refuse to allow their own work to be translated into Hebrew and published in Israel. Ironically, like most Western literary subcultures these days, Israel’s is predominantly left wing, so the Rooney brigade is seeking to punish its natural political allies.

But the intention is not only aimed at punishing Israel’s tiny cultural institutions. The boycott seeks to go well beyond the signatories and intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals. That includes writers who disagree with the organizers and do not believe that the IDF’s effort to root out Hamas qualifies as genocide as well as a range of Jewish writers in and outside of Israel whose views on this war may be tortured or finely nuanced. Because we must all speak as one. As ever, a single perspective is permissible. Writers used to enjoy conflict, complexity, contradiction—duking it out on paper or raucously talking over each other on a festival panel. Now we chant in a unified chorus.

I’m not so vain as to imagine that my refusal to have my novels translated into Hebrew would be crushing for the Israeli publishing industry or cripplingly disappointing for the country’s reading public. I’m delighted to learn whenever I’ve secured a translation deal, so in case any Israeli editors are reading this, allow me to go on the record: The Hebrew translation rights to my last novel are still available. And in case you might be reading this, Sally, whether I sell Hebrew translation rights is none of your business. Besides, to the degree that my fiction is the best expression of my own larger political outlook, disseminating my novels as far and widely as possible constitutes the optimal method of promoting that outlook. Publishing in translation sure beats prissily refusing to allow my precious sentences to be corrupted by the language of Jews.
Ireland and Israel’s strained relationship
The IRA played a role during World War II in supporting German Nazis. Although the government of Ireland was officially neutral, the IRA collaborated with the Nazi military intelligence. Adolf Hitler sent money, transmitters and spies to Ireland. Moreover, the IRA provided the Nazis with targeting information on British installations in Belfast. After Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, Ireland’s wartime leaders—President Douglas Hyde and Prime Minister Éamon de Valera—offered official condolences to the Nazi envoy in Dublin.

More recently, the Hezbollah terror group’s unprovoked attacks on Israeli communities in northern Israel, which began on Oct. 8, 2023—one day after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel—did not stir Ireland’s peacekeepers in the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to try and stop the shelling attacks nor did they call to impose the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. Passage of that resolution came in the wake of the summer 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, and called for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon—in particular, Hezbollah’s disarmament. Resolution 1701 established that no armed forces, other than UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces, could be south of the Litani River in Lebanon. Yet Hezbollah remained.

The Israel Defense Forces, in response to Hezbollah’s attacks during the last year, have moved from an aerial campaign to ground operations in Southern Lebanon to clear out Hezbollah forces. Israel has requested that the Irish contingent and all of UNIFIL move out of harm’s way. Ireland’s deputy premier and minister for defense and foreign affairs, Micheál Martin, responded by saying that he “strongly condemns” the IDF targeting and firing on the UNIFIL positions. Israel has repeatedly stated that it has no quarrel with the Lebanese people and certainly not with any of the UNIFIL peacekeepers.

This new dispute regarding the Irish peacekeepers comes after Ireland, Norway and Spain unilaterally recognized Palestinian statehood in May, essentially rewarding the Palestinians for the massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas and the kidnapping of 250 others as hostages on Oct. 7, 2023.

The tensions aren’t just in the political arena. Members of an Irish women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with their Israeli counterparts during a pregame meeting in February’s FIBA EuroLeague Women’s tournament. The Israeli team ended up defeating the Irish team, 87-57. The behavior of the Irish national team was the same as the Islamic Republic of Iran’s team and teams from Israel’s Arab enemies in other tournaments.

Ireland was the first member of the European Economic Community (EEC)—the precursor of the European Union—to declare in 1980 their support for Palestinian statehood. Additionally, Ireland didn’t establish diplomatic relations with Israel until 1975 and first opened its embassy in Tel Aviv in 1996, long after other Western European nations.

When Israel retaliated against missile attacks launched from Gaza by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in May 2021 during an 11-day conflict, the Irish government was the first E.U. state to condemn Israel, alleging the de facto “annexation of Palestinian land.” The issue propelling this condemnation was the decision by the Israeli Supreme Court affirming Jewish ownership of homes in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. It was an example of brazen Irish interference in an Israeli legal matter that had nothing to do with annexation.

Ireland has transformed from being an intensely Catholic state to an equally intense secular one. While the young Irish have moved away from their church, they are eagerly accommodating Islamists who seek to undermine and destroy the Judeo-Christian way of life. Ultimately, they will learn that Islamists seek to destroy their Irish culture as well.

The Catholic Church in Ireland had an antisemitic past but with Ireland becoming increasingly secular, the antisemitism of today is no longer of the religious variety. It has the marking of a leftist, ideologically driven hatred dressed as anti-colonialism. Dublin has adopted the Palestinian narrative without questioning or searching for the truth. Arab-Islamic colonialism is rarely if ever discussed, and Palestinian terrorism is largely excused. The fact that the Palestinians have rejected every opportunity for self-determination and statehood does not bother the Irish government. What the Palestinians want is the disappearance of Israel and the Jews. It seems that Dublin is OK with that.

Relations between Ireland and Israel have been strained for years and with Sinn Féin growing power in Dublin, the relationship isn’t likely to improve and may only get worse.
Why is the SNP silencing supporters of Israel?
Nobody should be surprised that the SNP refuses to tolerate debate. After all, this has long been a party with strong authoritarian tendencies, policing the speech and lifestyles of Scottish citizens while marginalising internal critics of its policies, especially around gender self-ID. As Mason himself put it last week, the SNP ‘does seem to have become less tolerant and narrower over the years and is not as inclusive as it used to be’.

But it is still shocking to see the SNP taking issue with one of its own MSPs for challenging the anti-Semitic implications of the genocide charge. After all, this absurd use of the term ‘genocide’ to describe Israel’s war against Hamas is an attempt to find the Jews guilty of precisely what was done to them by the Nazis, and to devalue the unique horror of the Holocaust itself.

So why is the SNP enforcing a myopically anti-Israel line? As strange as it may sound, there is a certain type of Scottish nationalist who believes that the Scottish people are just like the Palestinians. In their eyes, both are suffering under colonial rule. It’s a comparison that I’m sure would be lost on the civilians of Gaza.

The SNP’s expulsion of Mason provides another grim reminder of the two-tier racism that has been dominant across Britain since 7 October. While agitating against Jews and Israel is seen as ‘progressive’, any criticism of Islamist extremists like Hamas will have you attacked as Islamophobic. Indeed, it now seems that just questioning the official Hamas line, that Israel is guilty of ‘genocide’, can have you thrown out of a mainstream political party.

The treatment of John Mason is merely among the more dramatic examples of a deep intolerance in supposedly progressive, ‘anti-imperialist’ circles. On both sides of the border, the demonisation of Israel is green-lighting the censorship of much-needed dissent and debate.


Tablet: Why Jews Are Voting for Kamala Harris
According to polls, Kamala Harris is set to receive the lion’s share of the Jewish vote in November’s presidential election, by more than a 2-to-1 margin (just as Democrats have done for decades). But those same polls also predict that her Jewish support will be lower than any other Democratic candidate for the White House since 1988.

Curiosity about both candidates, and how each is about to fare with Jewish voters, led us to this Minyan, part of our series of roundtable discussions with American Jews. We wanted to talk to Jews who are planning to vote for Harris in 2024 and ask them what they like (and don’t like) about her—as a politician and as a person. We also wanted to hear what her supporters think about her Republican opponent, and how they believe each would handle the highest office in the land at a time when we are facing war in the Middle East and rising antisemitism at home, in addition to a host of domestic issues from immigration and abortion to crime and the economy. (We also put together a parallel Minyan discussion with Jews who are planning to vote for Donald Trump; you can find that discussion here.)

We put out a call for participants on social media during the week of Sept. 4; we heard from 119 Harris supporters, and selected 11 from across the country who seemed representative of that group. Of the 119 respondents, 77% were registered Democrats, for instance, and almost all of those who voted in 2016 or 2020 had voted for the Democratic candidate: 94% for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and 98% for Joe Biden in 2020. Regardless of official party affiliation, this group had a more consistently partisan voting record than the group of Trump voters we assembled, so this is reflected in the people we selected to take part in our Oct. 15 discussion. Most, but not all, participants were married; their self-described level of religious observance ranged from “just Jewish” or atheist to “traditional Orthodox,” and everything in between.

It is perhaps not surprising that in both of our roundtable discussions, participants had negative things to say about the “other” candidate. But whereas several of the Trump supporters in our other Minyan roundtable had negative things to say about their own preferred candidate, the Harris supporters seemed to have a more positive view of theirs. The Harris supporters believed that she was good for America, although they were less confident than the Trump voters that their candidate was good for Israel. Not everyone in this discussion was an enthusiastic supporter of Harris, but they agreed that the stakes for America in November are enormous, and the choice they’re facing is one of historic importance.
Tablet: Why Jews Are Voting for Donald Trump
How will Donald Trump fare among Jewish voters this November? While it’s true that American Jews have leaned Democratic for the past century—typically by more than a 2-to-1 margin, sometimes more than 3-to-1—it’s also true that this partisan gap has been narrower in recent elections than it was two or three decades ago. And Trump, specifically, has made rare inroads among Jewish voters, increasing his share of the Jewish vote to 30% in 2020 from 24% four years earlier.

Curiosity about both candidates, and how each is about to fare with Jewish voters, led us to this Minyan, part of our series of roundtable discussions with American Jews. We wanted to talk to Jews who are planning to vote for Trump in 2024 and ask them what they liked (and didn’t like) about him—as a politician and as a person. We also wanted to hear what his supporters think about his Democratic opponent, and how they believe each would handle the highest office in the land at a time when we are facing war in the Middle East and rising antisemitism at home, in addition to a host of domestic issues from immigration and abortion to crime and the economy. (We also put together a parallel Minyan discussion with Jews who are planning to vote for Kamala Harris; you can find that discussion here.)

We put out a call for participants on social media during the week of Sept. 4; we heard from 75 Trump supporters, and selected 12 from across the country—as well as American voters living in Israel—who seemed representative of that group. (Of the 75 respondents, only 45% were registered Republicans, for instance, and at least one-third voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, so those are perspectives you’ll find in our discussion.) The 12 who took part in our Oct. 15 discussion were mostly married, but also included single and widowed voters. Their self-described religious observance ranged from “just Jewish” to Orthodox, and everything in between.

A majority of participants—several of whom voted for Democrats in 2016 or 2020—conveyed real ambivalence about Trump as a person and described him with negative adjectives, but described Harris in equally negative terms. Overall, there was a consensus that issues around Israel, antisemitism, and in particular the aftermath of Oct. 7 weighed heavily in their decision to support Trump in November. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the vote they’re casting. But for these voters, the stakes feel different now—not just in terms of the American future, but the Jewish one.
Josh Hammer: Donald Trump may be the most pro-Jewish president ever
This election, there is no subgroup for whom the stakes are higher than my Jewish co-religionists.

That’s because, for starters, Donald Trump is quite possibly the most pro-Jewish president ever — or at least since George Washington famously assured the Jews of Newport, RI, that each child of the “stock of Abraham” would forever “sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree.”

Through word and deed, President Trump — a father of an observant Jew and grandfather of Jewish children — has repeatedly established himself as a true friend and guardian of the people of the covenant. And in the post-1948 era of Zionism, Trump has been by far the most loyal and transformative friend of the world’s sole Jewish state.

Trump ended decades of presidential timidity and promise-breaking by finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He withdrew the United States from the harrowing capitulation to evil that was the Obama-Biden nuclear accord with Iran and has slapped crippling sanctions on the mullocracy.

He decimated the Islamic State “caliphate” and decapitated Iranian arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani, both threats to Israel and Jews everywhere. He closed the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington and defunded the Palestinian Authority itself due to its barbaric “pay-to-slay” subsidies.

Trump also cut funding or outright withdrew from three anti-Israel UN bodies: the (grossly misnamed) UN Human Rights Council, UNWRA and UNESCO.

And we’re just getting started. Team Trump has boldly stood up for Israeli “settlements” in Judea and Samaria. The president formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and rolled out the most pro-Israel plan for peace with the Palestinian Arabs that a US president has ever endorsed.

Most remarkably, the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” shepherded through not one but two (thus far!) separate normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab world. That’s probably the most important positive diplomatic triumph for Israel (and for Jews worldwide, who benefit from a strong Jewish state) in decades. Imagine what a second term could bring.

On the domestic front, Trump signed a groundbreaking executive order to protect besieged Jewish and Zionist university students under the statutory ambit of Title VI — a dynamic move that has already led to a high-profile settlement agreement between the Department of Education and NYU. The order is perhaps the single most emphatic pro-Jewish action a sitting president has ever taken.

On religious liberty, Trump appointed myriad staunch First Amendment defenders up and down the federal judiciary. He’s also pushed administrative rules to protect religious social-service providers and faith-based adoption agencies from discrimination. And under Trump, the Department of Justice has routinely defended Jewish communities under assault. And, of course, Jews have benefited from tremendous economic gains under Trump.

Compare all that with a Biden-Harris administration — which would lend a voice to Jew-haters like Linda Sarsour and Ilhan Omar and, indeed, likely undo most (if not every one) of Trump’s advancements.

A President Joe Biden would surely resurrect the nuclear deal with Iran that posed an existential threat to Israel (and others) and re-elevate the terror-backing Palestinian Arab kleptocrats to positions of prominence. Anti-Semites would be empowered across university campuses and “woke” corporate America, throughout the federal bureaucracy and in the wretched bowels of Turtle Bay.

In short, Biden-Harris could lead to yet another cash bailout for an emboldened, nuke-seeking Iran and a nationwide unleashing of anti-Jewish bigotry, particularly from the left.


Mondaire Jones Says Israel Must Negotiate West Bank Land Swap for 'Lasting Peace and Security'
Congressional candidate Mondaire Jones (D., N.Y.) said Wednesday that a "land swap" in the West Bank is necessary for Israel to secure peace through a two-state solution. The former congressman also suggested that Israeli settlements there should be dismantled and called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expansion in the region "inappropriate."

During a Wednesday night debate, CBS News moderator Marcia Kramer asked if Jones believes Israel's borders need to return to what they were prior to the 1967 Six Day War, which secured the Jewish state the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Such a move would revoke land internationally recognized as belonging to Israel, weakening the nation.

"In an early position paper, you favored a two-state solution, a return to pre-1967 borders, which could affect Israeli settlements," Kramer said. "You also called for Jerusalem to be the capital of both Israel and the Palestinian state. Do you still believe that, and what's your solution to the Mid-East crisis?"

"I stand with Israelis and Palestinians who want to see a lasting peace and security in the region. That includes a two-state solution," Jones responded. "Part of that has to involve some kind of land swap. That is negotiated in the form of diplomacy."

Kramer asked him to clarify if that means some Israeli settlements would have to be dismantled.

"In the West Bank?" Jones said. "Settlement expansion under Bibi Netanyahu has been inappropriate, yes. If that's the question that's being asked of me."

Jones's Republican opponent, Rep. Mike Lawler, interjected, noting that Jones "previously said 1967. Is that what you want to go back to? Before 1967?"

Jones declined to answer, instead saying, "Listen, there has to be a negotiated agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that arrives at a two-state solution."

Kramer pressed him again on whether that meant returning to pre-1967 borders. Jones said that was up to Israelis and Palestinians.

"I'm baffled, truly," Lawler told Jones. "You just said you were a staunch supporter of Israel, and yet you are calling for a negotiated settlement and land swaps. Are you out of your mind?"


Jill Stein’s running mate celebrated violence against Israelis
Rudolph “Butch” Ware, the running mate of Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, in recent months celebrated violence against Israelis—including the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on the Jewish state.

Ware, an associate professor of history from University of California, Santa Barbara, joined Stein’s ticket in mid-August — less than two weeks after Ware’s hip-hop duo, Slum Prophecy, dropped an album-length tribute to the Oct. 7 attacks.

Marketed until earlier this month on a Shopify account bearing the name Ink of the Scholars, a California limited liability company registered in Ware’s name, the 11-track digital release extols the bloody Hamas raid even in its name: Aqsa Flood, after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, as the terrorist group termed the surprise attack.

An archived version of the now-deleted page makes this connection explicit.

“Eight brand new tracks from Slum Prophecy plus three remixes. All focused on the global uprising sparked Palestinian resistance which named their most recent insurgency Operation al-Aqsa Flood,” the description reads.

The title track turns on an Eastern-flavored vocal refrain, with the lyrics “Flood, pouring through/Cleansing you/Wash away lies with truth/Set you free/Breaking loose/To fulfill a prophecy” — while the rapped bridge bars run “you know you hear it/The flood is nearing/To Bethlehem/We getting in/Righteous mayhem.”

Other tracks involve similar fantasies or fetishization of violence. Besides “bodying cops” from “the rooftop,” the second track, “Kill Shot (Pick ‘em Off),” describes “Spitting like Iranian missiles/Crack the Iron Dome/Evacuate Israeli officials/Send ‘em flying home/The Fall of Rome” — months after an April attack in which Iran launched approximately 300 missiles and drones at Israel.
Mossad chief in Doha to resume hostage talks
The head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency was in Doha on Monday to resume negotiations for the release of the 101 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip, after a nearly two-month lull in talks.

CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani are joining David Barnea for the latest round of discussions.

According to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the officials will discuss “the various possibilities to restart negotiations for the release of hostages from Hamas captivity, based on recent developments.”

The Doha talks are taking place a day after Egypt, another key mediator, proposed a two-day ceasefire that would see four hostages released.

According to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, the proposal also includes the release of some Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The idea is to “move the situation forward” as talks continue for a more permanent ceasefire, he added.

There was no immediate response to the proposal from Israel, Hamas or Qatar.

On Oct. 24, Netanyahu’s office said that the prime minister “welcomes Egypt’s readiness to advance a deal for the release of the hostages.”

The statement continued: “Pursuant to the meetings that were held in Cairo, the Prime Minister has directed the Director of the Mossad to leave for Doha and advance a series of initiatives that are on the agenda, with the backing of the members of the Security Cabinet.”
Official: Israel, mediators have received no Hamas response to hostage deal proposals
Israel has received no official response from Hamas on the various proposals for a hostage deal under discussion, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel, nor have the mediators.

Israel is “checking all possibilities” for a deal, the official continues, and is willing to negotiate over any proposal.

In Doha, says the official, the Israeli team led by Mossad chief David Barnea discussed the Egyptian proposal for a small deal to restore trust between the sides, and the multi-stage deal being pushed by Qatar and the US.

Still, in any deal, says the official, Hamas will demand an end to the war in Gaza as a condition. “We are not willing to do that,” the official declares.

Israel still doesn’t have a clear picture of who is making decisions on hostage talks in Hamas after leader Yahya Sinwar was killed. “They still haven’t had their primaries,” says the official, “and Hamas abroad is in chaos.”
IDF PodCast: Fragments of October 7: Piecing Together the Unseen from the Battlefield
The Enemy Assets Seizing Unit has been tirelessly working around the clock, recovering fragments and enemy assets left behind on the battlefield.

In this episode of “Mission Brief”, discover how these pieces come together to reveal the full story of the battlefield.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more episodes.


Sharri Markson interviews the cousin of a Hamas hostage
Sky News host Sharri Markson has spoken to Tzachi Shachar, a cousin of a hostage held by Hamas.

This comes after SBS pulled an interview with Mr Shachar and refused to publish it.

“I would never censor an interview with the family of a current hostage,” Ms Markson said.




Poll findings show students believe UCLA prioritized free speech over safety
The University of California-Los Angeles has come under fire following the published findings of a study in response to anti-Israel protests, tent encampments and violence that roiled the campus this spring.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 22 the results of a survey, undertaken by the antisemitism task force at UCLA, which found that of 428 students, a whopping 75% thought school administrators treated antisemitism as less serious than other forms of bigotry on campus.

Lisa Katz, government affairs officer of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said the university’s choice “to prioritize free speech protections over addressing antisemitism on campus is utterly unacceptable. UCLA’s classification of the pro-Hamas encampment on campus as protected speech highlights the lack of clear guidelines distinguishing free speech from hate speech.”

Katz pointed out that “criminal assaults, vandalism, incitement to violence and other criminal behaviors are not protected speech and cannot hide behind First Amendment protections.”

She advocated for the school to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, in addition to doing more “to ensure that Jewish students are safe and protected on campus.”
Canadian Jewish groups call on University of British Columbia to address ‘sharp rise’ in antisemitism
A coalition of Canadian Jewish organizations is vocalizing the need to address Jew-hatred on campus after multiple incidents at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Allied Voices for Israel, Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Hillel BC, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and StandWithUs Canada released a joint statement on Oct. 23 before Simchat Torah—the last of the Jewish fall holidays—on “the sharp rise in antisemitic incidents” at UBC.

The statement said that “since the start of the academic year, Jewish staff, students and faculty have faced an increasingly hostile environment that cannot be allowed to persist.”

“Campus buildings have been vandalized with antisemitic slogans, Jewish faculty members have been targeted in smear campaigns,” the groups stated. “Anti-Israel student clubs promoted violence and disinformation on their social-media platforms.”

The organizations suggested five actions directed towards the administration to counter such behavior: condemning antisemitic incidents; holding student groups accountable; implementing education programs; fostering an inclusive campus environment; and engaging directly with Jewish students.

“We stand ready to work alongside UBC to address these urgent concerns and ensure that all members of the university community can thrive in a safe and welcoming environment,” the statement concluded.
Brown University suspends SJP for 'intimidation and harassment'
Brown University has suspended the campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine pending an investigation into its “intimidating” activity on campus, it was reported on Sunday.

In a statement following the suspension, which came into place on October 24, Brown said that “given the severity of alleged threatening, intimidating and harassing actions during an event on campus” the SJP branch would be suspended.

The event the statement refers to was a campus protest on October 18, in which student protesters from SJP campaigned against Brown Corporation for voting to not divest from Israel.

Following the suspension, and until the review is completed, SJP must cease all activities. Brown policy states that suspension of a group means it is not officially recognized as a campus organization and cannot hold meetings or events.

Brown added that while “protest is a necessary and acceptable means of expression,” it cannot allow protesters to “intimidate or harassment of community members, or infringe upon the rights of others.

“The implementation of the interim measures is based on the severity of the alleged behavior,” the statement added.

The statement said the investigation will take place externally. Brown said that should the investigation find that conduct codes were violated, sanctions will be applied.


The Free Press: Hezbollah Repressed a Revolution in Lebanon | Hezbollah's Hostages
Many ask why the Lebanese people have not stood up to the Hezbollah-dominated system that has made their country a failing state. The answer is that hundreds of thousands of them have. In a movement little known outside the region, in 2019, citizens took to streets and squares across the country to call for change.

The two outspoken women featured in today’s video describe the hope that drove what became known as the October 17 Revolution. They raised their voices and waved Lebanon’s flag in an atmosphere of heady idealism. Civilians came together across barriers of ethnicity and sect, and women gained prominence as protest leaders, demanding good governance and economic reform.

Hezbollah was not the primary target of their campaign, but it was Hezbollah enforcers who brutally attacked demonstrators while Lebanese police stood on the sidelines. Outside the country, foreign powers who said they were committed to a better future in Lebanon, made no attempt to assist the protesters. Hezbollah swiftly put a violent end to the dream.

Over the past year, the Center for Peace Communications, a New York nonprofit, interviewed Shi’ite opponents of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Sunni victims of Hezbollah in Syria, each of whom in their own way has fought back against the group’s depredations. At great personal risk, they let us record and film them bearing witness to the reality Hezbollah hides. To obscure the identity of these brave people, we have illustrated their stories with striking animation. The voices you hear, however, are theirs.

The result is Hezbollah’s Hostages, a Center for Peace Communications production which The Free Press presents exclusively to English-language audiences on successive Mondays.




X suspends Khamenei’s new Hebrew-language account
Social media platform X on Sunday suspended an official account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, one day after it was created.

The suspension of the @Khamenei_Heb account came shortly after it featured the tweet: “The Zionist regime made a mistake. It erred in its calculations on Iran. We will cause it to understand what kind of strength, ability, initiative, and will the Iranian nation has.”

The tweet appeared to be a reference to Israel’s Oct. 26 retaliation for the Islamic Republic’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack.

X is owned by Elon Musk, who has expressed support of Israel. He has visited Israel in November and attended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in Congress in July. He is also on record as advocating free speech on X and in general.

X did not immediately say why it suspended Khamenei’s account. The notice about the suspension referred readers to a text on X’s website that explains that suspended accounts were “found to be in violation of our rules,” which prohibit “violent and hateful entities.”


Chicago Jewish man on way to synagogue shot by attacker shouting 'Allahu Akhbar'
A Jewish man was shot multiple times in the shoulder as he was walking to a synagogue in Chicago on Saturday in broad daylight, Fox 32 Chicago, the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), and the Chicago Police Department announced on Sunday.

The man, 39, was shot by a 23-year-old gunman in the 2,600 block of North Washtenaw Avenue, which is home to many Orthodox Jewish families.

The gunman, who has yet to be identified, was heard on a security camera recording screaming “Allahu akbar” before engaging in a two-and-a-half-minute shootout with the police.

The Chicago Police Department told JNS that the incident was under investigation but did not directly confirm that the victim was Jewish.

However, when asked if the victim was wearing anything that identified him as an Orthodox Jew during a press conference, Deputy Police chief Kevin Bruno said that “the victim is from the community.”

Bruno said that at 9:35 a.m., the man was walking in West Rogers Park “when an armed offender approached from behind and fired shots at the victim, striking the victim in the shoulder.”

“Responding officers responded to the scene, and as they were on the scene, at about 9:55, the offender reemerged from an alley and fired shots at the officers and at the responding paramedics,” as well as at an ambulance, he said.“Over the next two-and-a-half minutes, the offender emerged from various locations and exchanged shots with the officers,” Bruno added.


Floyd Mayweather calls Israel his ‘home away from home’
Legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather has made his second visit to Israel since October 7.

The undefeated champion, known for his philanthropic efforts, shared his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport through a heartfelt Instagram post, expressing gratitude for the warm welcome he received.

He stated, “There’s nothing like returning to such warmth and hospitality! A heartfelt thank you to the wonderful team at Ben Gurion Airport for the welcome back…It feels like home away from home!

“Actions speak louder than words, and I’m here to support in every way I can. Here’s to another great journey together.”

Mayweather has been actively supporting Israel since the outbreak of conflict last year. He has used his private plane to deliver essential medical supplies to the nation.

During his previous visit in March, he met soldiers, rescue workers, and civilians, showing solidarity with those affected by the ongoing situation.

His recent trip included visits to an Israel Defense Forces base where he hosted a barbecue for military personnel, and the headquarters of United Hatzalah, Israel's largest volunteer emergency medical service.

Mayweather was also honoured in Jerusalem with the the Champion for Israel award, which he received at the Dan Family Aish World Center for his advocacy against antisemitism and hate.

This special recognition is reserved for individuals who actively stand against such issues and support Israel, further highlighting Mayweather’s commitment to making a positive impact in the region.

Last week it was announced that Mayweather made a donation of $100,000 to United Hatzalah to help purchase 100 bulletproof vests, enhancing the safety of their volunteers amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.




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