Tuesday, December 03, 2024
NGO Monitor: Amnesty’s Genocide Inversion: A Preliminary Analysis
Israel’s Protection of Civilians
Amnesty’s premise, that Israel seeks “to bring about their [Palestinians] physical destruction,” is obviously absurd when judged against its actions in Gaza during the past 14 months. .
According to COGAT – the IDF body that facilitates aid into Gaza – by November 26, 2024, over 1.1 million tons of aid had entered the territory since the beginning of the war. In addition, Israel has constructed humanitarian corridors, imposed tactical pauses, and vaccinated hundreds of thousands of children. COGAT also established a joint task force with the UN and aid organizations to coordinate the transport and distribution of aid.
Moreover, as Amnesty acknowledges, Israel has designated “safe-zones” for the civilian population, designed to protect them and limit their exposure to the fighting.
The contention that a country ostensibly engaging in genocide would provide aid, vaccinate children and establish safe havens for the millions of people it supposedly seeks to destroy is inherently nonsensical.
Systematic Methodological Failures
Sham methodology is a hallmark of Amnesty publications on the conflict. When describing specific Israeli operations, Amnesty informs readers that it had “found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.”
It is unclear – absent communication with Hamas members or access to Israeli intelligence – on what basis the NGO has made such a sweeping claim, particularly given the Hamas modus operandi of locating all of its members and materiel in civilian settings.
According to international law, assessment of the legality of a military strike requires knowledge of the specific target, the anticipated collateral damage, if any, and of the military advantage that the attacker believed it would gain – knowledge that Amnesty clearly does not have. Additionally, Amnesty does not have access to the requisite information to determine if a particular individual was a civilian or a member of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Moreover, contrary to what is implied in Amnesty’s statement, the fact that civilians were harmed in an attack – in cases in which the casualties were in fact civilians – does not ipso facto make it illegal under international law. Every loss of civilian life is tragic, but not every tragedy is a war crime.
In another blatant methodological failure evident in the press release, Amnesty apparently parrots the Gaza Ministry of Health in citing 42,000 as the number of Palestinian fatalities as of October 7th, 2024. As has been repeatedly documented, these claims are not credible, and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. In contrast, when discussing Israeli casualty data, Amnesty makes a point of distinguishing civilians from soldiers.
The press release also includes some examples – none of which can be independently verified – that ostensibly support the accusation of genocide. For example, Amnesty claims to have “documented the genocidal acts” in 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024. “Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.” As noted, Amnesty had no independently verifiable evidence of anything taking place in Gaza and could not possibly document any of the claims – this and similar accusations are entirely without substantive merit and designed to reinforce the propaganda claim.
Propaganda to Promote ICC Lawfare and Arms Embargoes
Amnesty’s report, rather than serious research, must be viewed in the context of the ICC and the NGO arms embargo cases in which Amnesty is playing a central role, used as a PR tool to bolster these campaigns. According to Amnesty, states must “arrest[ing] and hand[ing] over those wanted by the ICC,” referring to Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defense Minister. Additionally, the NGO asserts that “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide.”
It is clear that in promoting genocide inversion, Amnesty – which has devoted many years to the delegitimization of Israel regardless of policies – is simply continuing its decades long lawfare campaign.
As the six former US prosecutors of Nazi war crimes wrote, “The core truth is that the genocidal frenzy of killing, rape, torture, kidnapping, and mutilation that Hamas launched in Israel on Oct. 7 were crimes of monstrous evil …. People of goodwill here and abroad should reject propaganda that conflates genocide with the heartbreak of casualties in defensive war and that dishonestly portrays Israel — which is combatting genocide no less heroically and necessarily than did our fighting forces in Europe in the 1940s — as a perpetrator of that infamous crime.”
It's a Fallacy that Ideas Can't Be Defeated
It is a fallacy that ideas can't be defeated. Received wisdom has it that unless root causes are addressed, no conflict can be resolved. The same sophistry asserts that Israel can't conquer Hamas even if it annihilates the internationally designated terrorist entity militarily. Of course it can.Brendan O’Neill: There's Nothing Radical about Flying the Palestinian Flag
Hizbullah has just come crawling to a ceasefire agreement with Israel. Its ballyhooed status as the most powerful non-state actor in the world has been stripped away in the aftermath of Israel's targeted campaign against its leadership, followed by a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon.
In its 13-month war with Israel, in solidarity with Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocity, Hizbullah has been defeated. The regional alliance of militias, funded and buttressed by Iran, has been proven a chimera. Iran can't come to the rescue of any of its proxy states because Iran itself has been having a very bad year. Its barrage of 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Oct. 1 was ineffective and humbling, undermining the credibility of Iran's axis of resistance, and upending regional dynamics.
Some are lauding the ceasefire as a rare win for diplomacy in the Middle East. But it would never have happened if Hizbullah hadn't been shaken to its combat boots, just as every overwhelmed and fractured warmongering side has only come to the negotiating table when its very existence came face-to-face with extinction.
All of this leaves Hamas isolated and clinging by its fingernails, with 18,000 of its fighters dead, and much of its vast tunnel network destroyed, Gaza reduced to a lawless, chaotic mess, with tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, and Yahya Sinwar burning in hell. That war grinds on, Hamas's violent ideology still intact, but its sphere of potency is shrunken and its raison d'etre delegitimized.
To the fashionably Israelophobic of the Euro activist classes, waving the Palestinian flag might just be a convenient way to prove your moral worth to your fellow intimates in right-thinking society. But to Israelis, the flag can prick awful memories of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
There are just too many of these flags now, right? They're everywhere. Take a walk round London and you'll see more Palestinian flags than Union flags. You might even see more Palestinian flags than Pride flags. The middle classes drape them over their shoulders when they bravely take a break from Saturday brunching to march against the Jewish State. They flutter from lampposts. There isn't a campus in the land that is not adorned with them.
There are TikTok videos advising the young on how to match a red beret with a green blouse and black trousers so that everyone you encounter will know what an amazingly moral person you are. Don't get me started on the keffiyeh, the uniform of the self-righteous, the sartorial signifier of political rectitude.
Some scoff at the idea that Jews might feel put out by the flag under which a thousand of their co-religionists were butchered last year. I think these ubiquitous flags have far more to do with us than with Palestinians. Not content with commandeering the keffiyeh and making it the hot must-have of polite society, now the Palestinian flag is a thing the city elites might hang from their windows so their neighbors will know they're Good. It's about a kind of cultural supremacism.
The Palestinian flag's omnipresence feels oppressive to those of us who've long since tired of our towns and cities being turned into soapboxes by an activist class that loves nothing more than impressing its moral dominion over us little folk. There's an ironically conformist bent to these ostentatious displays of the Palestinian colors.
There's nothing radical about flying the Palestinian flag. If you want to be radical, wave the Israeli flag. People will splutter and rage and manhandle you. They will grab your flag and run off with it. They will destroy it like some Dark Ages hysteric burying a blasphemous icon.
Echoes of a sorry past: Antisemitism is thriving yet again
This anti-Jewish furor rose to a fever pitch during the Crusades as European armies seeking to liberate the Holy Land from Muslims slaughtered thousands of Jews who were in the way as the armies marched east. The slaughters were indiscriminate, with women and children tortured and killed without mercy in the name of Christian charity.Newly elected Los Angeles DA vows to crack down on antisemitic hate crimes
Without much respite, Jews remained targets of oppression and exclusion across much of Europe. England expelled its Jews in 1290, and France expelled its Jews in 1182, 1305, 1322 and 1394. In 1492, Spain expelled its Jewish community, then the largest such community in Europe.
Unable to defend themselves, these Jewish communities had to suffer endless dramatic dislocations or worse. And when Jews were allowed to live in Western nations from time to time, they were nonetheless relegated to pariah status. Ranging from accusations that they were guilty of ritual murder (the false accusation that Jews use Christian blood to bake the unleavened bread eaten at Passover), that they were vile moneylenders (when most other occupations were forbidden to them) and that they were disloyal to their countries of residence (even though they would die in great numbers defending those nations), endless depredations were carried out against Jews.
With frequency, even in modern times, discrimination and persecution continue. There was the unjustified espionage prosecution of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in late 19th-century France, primarily because he was a Jew and deemed likely to be a traitor to France. Anti-Jewish feelings resonated across France. Ultimately, Dreyfus was exonerated, but not before he was made to suffer indignities and vile imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
As late as 1912, the czarist regime in Russia permitted the prosecution of a Jew on a charge of ritual murder. And of course, the Nazi Holocaust in the 20th century, which resulted in the industrialized killing of 6 million Jews, with the complicity of many European nations, was the apex of violence against Jews.
All of this establishes an unenviable pattern for Western nations. This pattern was allegedly broken in the aftermath of World War II, with the discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust and its mass destruction of the European Jewish community. It might have been expected that civilized nations sufficiently awakened to the consequences of Jew-hatred would have turned away from the vile isolation and persecution of Jews.
Yet just days ago, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the British lawyer Karim Khan, seemed to fall right into a pattern as he decided to issue a warrant for the arrest of two representatives of the Jewish people on unsubstantiated allegations of war crimes.
The war in question continues as Israeli leaders attempt to retrieve civilian hostages taken following an unprovoked and horrific attack by Hamas militants and as they seek to put an end to the unceasing launching of missiles by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israeli civilians. The charges filed by Mr. Khan are, on their face, simply anti-Israel and, if we do not mince words, anti-Jewish. Even worse, a number of European nations have announced that they are prepared to enforce these warrants (although France seems to have decided otherwise, at least temporarily).
Israel, as the world’s only Jewish state, is the ultimate symbolic Jewish community within the world community. Joining in an attack on the leaders of that state needs to be characterized for what it is: anti-Jewish.
The echo of past anti-Jewish actions is inescapable. As has happened so often in the past, Jews are being attacked for actions that have never caused and would never cause others to be prosecuted.
Nations have always fought ferociously against those who seek to destroy them. Ask the French, the British, the Dutch, the Czechs, the Poles and our fellow Americans. This has been an unbroken tradition that remains in force, as manifested most recently by the assistance given to Ukraine as that nation defends itself (including by offensive actions) against Russia.
Yet when Israel, overtly threatened with destruction by Iran and its proxies, seeks to eliminate that threat and to free its captives, its leaders are deemed guilty of war crimes. Jews are again being treated differently from every other group. With the ICC becoming an instrument of anti-Jewish prejudice, the pattern of anti-Jewish conduct seems alive and well.
There is another French expression that has persisted for centuries. It was said of the Bourbon kings by that great cynic Talleyrand that “Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublie.” [They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.] That statement seems apt in the current situation.
Sophisticated nations assuredly remember the systemic persecution of Jews over the course of thousands of years, but it does not appear that they have learned much. Antisemitism appears to be thriving yet again.
When Nathan Hochman is sworn in on Tuesday as Los Angeles’ district attorney, after defeating incumbent George Gascón by nearly 20 points, the longtime criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor will be wearing a suit with a yellow ribbon pinned to it.Pershing Square delisting from Amsterdam after Bill Ackman slams violence against Israeli soccer fans
“This is a daily reminder for me about this issue,” Hochman told Jewish Insider in an interview last month. “The minute you stop thinking about the hostages in Gaza is the minute that you’ll start thinking about a whole lot of other things, and then they will be forgotten.”
The homage to the hostages still held by Hamas 14 months after the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel comes from a place of genuine concern from Hochman, 61, who grew up steeped in the Los Angeles Jewish community. It also hints at how the war in Gaza, thousands of miles from L.A., played an unlikely but important role in this race. Following months of raucous anti-Israel activity — from activists shutting down the busy 405 freeway or demonstrating violently outside a synagogue in Beverly Hills — in which protesters faced few consequences, Hochman had an easy pitch to Jewish voters.
“If you want to shut down a freeway, if you want to shut down the airport, if you want to vandalize a college campus and make it so students can’t get an education there, if you want to attack Jews in front of a synagogue in the Pico-Robertson area, you will be held accountable,” Hochman said.
Hochman’s message to voters was that Gascón, a self-described progressive prosecutor elected in 2020 amid a groundswell of anti-police sentiment on the left, was out of touch with the everyday concerns of mainstream Angelenos. It’s a message that resonated with people unhappy with the perception that crime is on the rise in Los Angeles County, home to more than nine million people.
“Safety is probably the crossover issue of 2024, and I know that having spoken to literally thousands of people over the last year and a half from across the political spectrum,” Hochman said.
Pershing Square Holdings said Monday it plans to delist its shares from Euronext Amsterdam, after billionaire Bill Ackman urged its board last month.Antisemitism Awareness Act remains stalled as lawmakers work to finalize defense bill
The investment holding company, in which Ackman and his family own a 23% stake, said its shares will continue to be traded in dollars and pounds on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.
Delisting from Euronext Amsterdam and consolidating trading on the London Stock Exchange would reduce regulatory complexity and improve liquidity, Pershing Square Chairman Rupert Morley said in a statement.
A formal application for delisting will be submitted to Euronext, the company said.
The move comes after Ackman last month announced his intention to delist the company from Amsterdam following attacks on Israeli soccer fans.
Talks over the future of the Antisemitism Awareness Act remain largely where they stood prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, with time dwindling to finalize the annual defense and national security bill to which the legislation could be attached.How would incoming Senate Democrats have voted on Sanders’ anti-Israel resolutions?
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had proposed adding the legislation to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, rather than holding a standalone vote on the Senate floor on the bill.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) rejected that proposal, insisting on a standalone vote for the legislation that passed the House with bipartisan support months ago.
Both sides are sticking to their positions, with still no clear path forward; the final NDAA text could be released as soon as this week.
A source familiar with the situation said that Schumer is still pushing to include the legislation in the NDAA and stands by his original position on the issue. Schumer told JI before the Thanksgiving holiday that he saw the NDAA as the only way to get the bill passed through the Senate before the end of the year.
Floor time for standalone votes in the Senate in the final weeks of the year is being dedicated almost exclusively to judicial nominations. The Senate will also have to consider the NDAA, government funding legislation and potentially disaster relief aid before the end of the year.
Schumer has faced ongoing pressure to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify an executive order declaring that the antisemitism should be treated as a prohibited form of discrimination in educational settings and instructing the Department of Education to utilize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to evaluate claims of antisemitic discrimination.
In recent days, a mobile billboard truck was spotted outside Schumer’s apartment in Brooklyn and outside his Manhattan office with a countdown to how many legislative days Schumer has left “to keep his word,” to pass the legislation. According to a disclaimer at the bottom of the sign, the truck was paid for by the same group of unknown backers, calling itself the Florence Avenue Initiative, that has spent millions on advertisements pressing Schumer to bring the bill up for a vote.
A new group of six Democrats will soon enter the Senate — a shift that could impact the level of support for measures like those Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led last month to halt certain U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.Paraguay to reopen its embassy in Jerusalem
Jewish Insider reached out to each of the new Senate Democrats multiple times to ask how they would have voted on Sanders’ legislation. Just two responded. Nineteen senators — all Democrats — voted for at least one of Sanders’ resolutions.
A spokesperson for Sen.-elect Andy Kim (D-NJ) said that Kim couldn’t say how he would have voted.
“Without having all the information available to senators through security briefings or being able to participate in the Senate floor debate, Congressman Kim won’t conjecture on the vote,” Kim spokesperson Anna Connole said.
Kim sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, members of which have access to certain classified briefings and material.
He’ll be replacing appointed Sen. George Helmy (D-NJ), who voted for one of the three Sanders resolutions. All other outgoing Senate Democrats opposed the Sanders-led resolutions.
A spokesperson for Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) said unequivocally that he would have opposed the resolutions.
“Sen.-elect Schiff does not support steps that would weaken Israel’s bargaining position during ceasefire negotiations, such as blocking aid amid ongoing attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian proxies. He will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself,” Schiff spokesperson Marisol Samoya said in a statement to JI.
Schiff also recently told the Jewish Telegraph Agency that the U.S. should “keep pressing” Israel to formulate a postwar plan and path to a two-state solution, as well as work with Israel to increase humanitarian aid and decrease casualties, but said “I don’t think cutting off support for Israel right now is the right course.”
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña will travel to Jerusalem next week to attend the reopening of the South American country’s embassy in the Jewish state’s capital, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said on Tuesday.
The delegation will also include the speaker of Paraguay’s Chamber of Deputies—Raúl Luís Latorre Martinez—and other senior officials.
Peña is scheduled to address the parliament on the morning of Dec. 11, followed by a Knesset ceremony with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.
The reopening of Paraguayan’s diplomatic mission will take place the next day at the Har Hotzvim industrial park in northwestern Jerusalem.
“About three months ago, I had the honor of inaugurating the Israeli embassy in Paraguay,” Ohana said in comments cited by Hebrew media. “In a moving ceremony, we affixed the mezuzah from the house where Sivan Elkabetz and Naor Hasidim were murdered on Oct. 7 [2023].”
“Next week, we will close a circle. Paraguay’s president will inaugurate the embassy in Jerusalem. Shimon, Sivan’s father; Avi, Naor’s father; and Elhanan Danino—the father of Uri, who was kidnapped from the Nova party and was murdered—will attend,” stated the lawmaker.
“Avi and Elhanan joined me on my recent visit to Paraguay, and like me, they felt the president’s embracing and sympathetic attitude towards the State of Israel and support for its existential struggle,” he concluded.
Israel is the only place in the Middle East where Christians are safe. pic.twitter.com/sbuzOrA8Li
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) December 3, 2024
This wasn’t a debate but a shakedown at the Oxford Union
Much to its pride, the Oxford Union, which calls itself the foremost debating society in the world, passed a motion last week naming Israel a genocidal apartheid state.The shame of the Oxford Union
The Union is not part of the university, and I always avoided it when I was at Oxford in the 1990s. It was for teenage braggarts – that is, the vulnerable and the perennially insecure – pretending they were cabinet ministers. Antisemitism at Oxford was mere fumes then, though you might meet a professor who was also a Kindertransport child. (I did, and I knew without knowing I knew.) We were something different: slightly vulgar, slightly odd. Nothing worse than that, though I remain annoyed that the Jewish role in the foundation of the university – money, obviously, before we were expelled in 1290 – is somewhat opaque. If I had known I would have minded less about the constant anxiety that, in Oxford, a cathedral is always about to fall on your head.
The debate was a disgrace, and beleaguered Jewish students, bullied since October 7, avoided it. They don’t need the pain, and that is why the motion passed with such a large majority: 278 to 59. Many of those who attended – including the pro-Israel speakers – called themselves shocked by the tone of the debate, the heckling, the laughter, the strategic coughing. It was compared to the Dreyfus trial, and in that is my hope.
It isn’t that the Oxford Union is often wrong. Most famously it passed a pacifist motion in 1933. Six years later, we were at war. It’s this: it wasn’t a debate but a shakedown, and you only do that if you are stupid – not impossible in Oxford – and afraid.
First, the premise: this House believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide. That’s a debate where you need to prove your innocence. Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, the president of the Union, a position which seems to manifest with its own dinner jacket and political imperatives (always absurd in the young) did not just chair the debate. He spoke for the proposition.
The organisation was chaotic. The proposition initially had two Jews: Norman Finkelstein, who dropped out, and Miko Peled, who said that night, “October 7 was not terrorism” but “heroism”. It is lucky for Finkelstein that he did drop out. Susan Abulhawa, his fellow speaker for the proposition (“Israel is the devil”) said in a Twitter/X post: “He [Finkelstein] didn’t want to be overshadowed by actual Palestinians who can speak more cogently and eloquently than him on the matters pertaining to our own lives, on which he claims expertise, almost exclusively.” The president took Finkelstein’s place.
In fact, there was a Palestinian on the pro-Israel side: Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a founder of Hamas who became an informant after seeing Hamas members torture and murder Palestinians. He says he asked himself: “What if Hamas succeeded in destroying Israel and building a state? Will they destroy our people in this way?” I am told the Union admitted Yousef only reluctantly, after the rest of the pro-Israel side – the broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti and the lawyer Natasha Hausdorff – refused to appear without him.
The tone was set early by the first speaker, the “poet” Mohammed El-Kurd. El-Kurd began his speech by announcing that “there is no room for debate” and ended it by saying he refused to share a platform with his opponents, after which he walked out of the chamber. This gesture has dubious precedent at the Union. George Galloway pulled the same stunt in a 2013 debate when he learned that his opponent, Eylon Levy, was an Israeli citizen.
The Cherwell’s report conveys the feverish atmosphere in the chamber for the rest of the night. When Sacerdoti attempted to return the debate to reality, a heckler interrupted him, shouting “You sick motherfucker!” and “genocidal maniac”. To be fair to the heckler, who was removed, he was just expressing the spirit of a crowd that enthusiastically applauded each calumny against the Jewish state. Jewish students said the room vibrated with hostility.
The official speakers supporting the proposition were no better. Activist Miko Peled began by solemnly insisting that the difference “us and them” is that “we say we do not harm a child”. Five minutes later he was shouting that “What happened on October 7 was not terrorism — these were acts of heroism!”. At this point, a Jewish student intervened on a point of order to note that glorification of terror is a criminal offense. Peled’s amused response: “Arrest me!” was greeted with whoops and cheers.
The most chilling message, however, came not from any of the speakers or from a heckler but from something the crowd as a whole didn’t say. During his remarks, Mosab Hassan Yousef, who spoke against the proposition, asked for a show of hands of those in the room who, if they had had advance knowledge of the 7 October attacks, would have warned Israel. Not even a quarter of the crowd raised their hands.
The silent expanse of unraised hands spoke louder than the final vote. The vote, after all, merely endorsed an abstract and laughably counterfactual verdict against Israel. The sparse show of hands went much further. It said that a large majority of students believed that, for their country’s alleged sins, Israeli citizens deserved to be raped, murdered, kidnapped, and tortured, pitilessly and indiscriminately.
At that moment, the debate ceased to be an abstract proposition. A room full of future journalists, professors, public servants, judges, and MPs openly and unashamedly endorsed the inhuman logic of a pogrom. And Jewish students who braved a hostile crowd to attend the debate were confronted with the fact that a sizable number of the people they sit next to in class would, in a fight between them and a terrorist organisation, back the terrorists to the death.
Speaking last and near midnight, Natasha Hausdorff summed up the debate, declaring it “a dark moment in the Oxford Union’s history”. The Union has seen dark moments before, but at least in the case of the King and Country debate the stain on its reputation was wiped clean by the subsequent exculpatory actions of its members. This time, I’m afraid the darkness that has fallen on the Union, the university, and the country is here to stay.
For those who ask why we didn't document the confrontation ourselves - before we entered the venue, we were forced to sign a document prohibiting any filming or photography during the event.
— יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) December 3, 2024
Anyone who so much as took a photo would be immediately removed.
We had no choice. The… https://t.co/1FLBlzLjyT
Video game recreating October 7 atrocities offered to Canadian gamers on Steam
A video game glorifying the October 7 attacks on Israel is available for purchase on Steam, a digital distribution service.“Jews don't count” | Israel & US progressives with Brianna Wu
The game, Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, was originally released in April 2022. An update released following the Hamas invasion now allows players to recreate certain atrocities, such as attacking an Israeli military base using motorized paragliders, a tactic used by Hamas on October 7.
In October, the game was pulled from Steam in the United Kingdom after the company was contacted by the country’s digital counter-terrorism unit. However, as of Monday, the game remained accessible for Canadian users on Steam and was even heavily discounted during Black Friday sales.
Valve Corporation, the parent company of Steam, one of the world’s largest online gaming marketplaces, did not respond to National Post’s request for comment prior to publication.
The trailer for the updated gameplay features an Arabic narrator telling players: “Where are those who carry the explosive belts? Where are them? Come here, I want an explosive belt to blow up myself over the Zionists!!! It is a jihad, a jihad of victory or martyrdom!”
Gameplay footage posted to YouTube shows militants chanting Allahu Akbar (“God is great”) and “From the river to the sea,” a Hamas rallying cry associated with calling for the destruction of Israel. The game also allows players to dress as keffiyeh-clad militants with green headbands, a popular identifier worn by Hamas terrorists, and identifies Israeli forces with an inverted red triangle above them — another symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos.
In the wake of October 7th the battle lines were drawn not just in the Middle East, but around the world. And while many progressives decided to pin their flag to Hamas, there were those that realized a terror army committing atrocities wasn’t the cause they wanted to fight for.
Eylon sits down with Brianna Wu, the Executive Director of Rebellion Pac, a software developer and Democratic political operative. Trans activist, queer, progressive and in a minority among her circles as a friend of Israel.
Together they discuss the growing madness of progressive causes rooting for the violence and hatred of Hamas. The Queers for Palestine movement and how people can root for a movement that wishes them dead. And the war being battled online for the hearts and minds of the next generation of Americans.
My favorite part of my chat with @EylonALevy is how I wish the trans community would take lessons from Israel.
— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) December 3, 2024
Yes, people hate us too. We can either sit around and feel like victims or we can be adults, stick together and make choices for our survival. And yes, those choices…
October 7 through the Eyes of Israel's Para-Rescue Commandos
On Oct. 8, 2023, Noga, 27, Head of Operational Command for the Paratroopers' Special Forces brigade, sent a text message to Guy, a reserve combat paramedic in the Air Force Rescue Unit 669: "I need a rescue helicopter. We've got casualties. Can you help me?"Mother of US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel dies
No one would guess that this conversation was between an engaged couple who had already set a date for their wedding.
"Our unit's deputy commander was seriously wounded," Noga recalls. "I couldn't get through to the command center to request a rescue helicopter....So, I sent a WhatsApp to Guy," who contacted a friend from 669 who serves at the Air Force's control center.
"It's one of the reasons why the unit's deputy commander is alive today. After a challenging six-month rehabilitation, he returned to his position and is back on the ground again in Gaza."
Since the beginning of the war, Unit 669 has rescued and evacuated more than 2,000 wounded.
Guy has recounted the events of Oct. 7 and the war from his perspective as a combat paramedic in 669 in his new book, The Rescue: October 7 through the Eyes of Israel's Para-Rescue Commandos.
The mother of US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel has died while he is in captivity, the family says.
“My father’s mother died and my father can’t say goodbye to her because he is in Hamas captivity for more than a year,” Siegal’s daughter Elan writes on Facebook.
“My father can’t stand with us tomorrow in the cemetery, he can’t say goodbye to the woman who loved him and raised him his whole life,” she writes. “A violent and murderous terror organization dictates our lives — from Gaza to the great United States and the whole world is silent.”
Siegel, 65, was taken captive with his wife, Aviva from their home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, when Hamas terrorists attacked their community, killing and abducting Israelis and burning kibbutz homes.
The couple was driven into Gaza in their own car, along with a neighbor and her two children.
Aviva Siegel was released on November 26 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel. Keith remains a captive.
13 women and girls are still held captive by Hamas, enduring unimaginable suffering.
— Israel in Canada (@IsraelinCanada) December 3, 2024
In a report detailing the experiences of Israeli hostages, @USGSRSGPatten wrote that there was convincing evidence to suggest that some of the hostages have been subjected to rape and sexualized… https://t.co/BA0oC2BOjL pic.twitter.com/8AHABcv4oi
In honor of Omer Neutra, the 21-year-old American-Israeli who was tragically confirmed murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and whose body remains kidnapped in Gaza, flags at state buildings in New York—his home state—are being flown at half-staff. 🇮🇱🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Vaz1pLMrwb
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) December 3, 2024
Just a reminder, @ICRC @ICRC_ilot's role has been relegated to no more than a glorified Uber driver. In 423 days, they have not seen a single hostage in captivity, have not provided any proof of life and have even refused to deliver medicine to the hostages. https://t.co/4XGqpH0DnO
— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) December 3, 2024
Released hostage Amit Soussana says Trump’s words offer ‘hope’
President-elect Donald Trump’s warning that there would be “all hell to pay in the Middle East” if the hostages in Gaza are not released before he assumes office has encouraged one former captive.British hostage’s mum: UK decision to back UN ceasefire motion ‘broke my heart’
Amit Soussana, 41, who spent 55 harrowing days in Gaza, said Trump’s words offered a glimmer of hope for others still trapped when she spoke on Monday at Mill Hill Synagogue just moments after Trump posted his statement to Truth Social.
Trump declared that while everyone was talking about the hostages, it was “all talk and no action!”
He pledged, “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”
Soussana said the post made her feel that “something is changing,” adding: “I really hope something will change because we cannot live like this anymore... The world needs to wake up.”
Earlier that day, Mandy Damari made an appeal for the return of her British- Israeli daughter, Emily, one of 100 hostages still held in Gaza, imploring Foreign Secretary David Lammy to prioritise their welfare in aid negotiations.
But Lammy, posting on X hours later, instead urged Israel to address what he called the “unacceptable humanitarian situation in Gaza,” without mentioning the hostages.
In response, Soussana said: “I was in Gaza for 55 days. After four weeks, there was very little food, and we were happy because Israel was taking a stand… We suffered from it because we didn’t have food, but we were happy [about the blockade]”.
Soussana said that Hamas was “stealing” supplies going into Gaza and and called for aid to be sent to hostages as a matter of priority,
While she has told her story at the United Nations and to journalists, this was her first address to a synagogue, organised by the Israel Engagement Hub in partnership with the United Synagogue and Stand With Us.
The mother of British Gaza hostage Emily Damari has said the decision by the British government to vote for an unconditional ceasefire motion in the UN “shocked me and broke my heart.”
In a speech delivered in from of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary at the Labour Friends of Israel annual reception in central London, Mandy Damari said: “Last month, the government voted for an unconditional ceasefire in the UN that would leave Emily and the other hostages in the hands of Hamas, giving them no incentive to release them.
“That vote shocked me and it broke my heart. Nobody is more supportive of peace than I am, nobody. But there will be no peace until Emily and all the hostages are brought home. Those who are alive should be returned to their family.”
Her condemnation of the UN vote led to a response from the PM when he delivered his speech. Starmer tells LFI reception release of hostages ‘number one item’ for a Gaza ceasefire
In a speech that received loud applause, and a standing ovation when it ended, Damari said she wished to thank both Keir Starmer and David Lammy for raising the profile of her daughter’s plight following a meeting with her.
But she added: “But let’s be honest, nothing has been tried so far. Nothing that has been tried so far has really made any difference.”
In a speech that left many of the 550 strong audience at the event in tears, Damari said she had not come to the LFI reception to “ask for pity” and she had previously been one of the least political people in a room.
Mandy Damari demands action not words - at the very least can’t our government do more to demand proof of life?
— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) December 2, 2024
She stood there so bravely, tearing up only at the end. And who can blame her when her darling girl has been held by rapist terrorists for more than a year. pic.twitter.com/zlOVy7km5P
Starmer tells LFI lunch release of hostages ‘number one item’ for a Gaza ceasefire
Keir Starmer has told the Labour Friends of Israel annual reception his government would not support a Gaza ceasefire unless its “number one item” was the return of all hostages.
Delivering the keynote speech at Monday’s event the Prime Minister was forced to respond to a daming attack on the UK’s position at the United Nations made in a speech by the mother of British hostage Emily Damari.
Speaking to 550 guests, including the PM, cabinet ministers and communal leaders, Mandy Damari said the UK government’s vote for an unconditional ceasefire at the United Nations would leave “Emily and the other hostages in the hands of Hamas.”
To loud applause, Emily’s mother added: “That vote shocked me and it broke my heart.”British hostage mum: UK government decision to back UN ceasefire motion ‘broke my heart’
Responding to the speech, given a standing ovation, Starmer said:”Now, everyone here heard Mandy Damari’s speech just now…
“And everyone will have been moved by the love and pain in those words. I want to be absolutely clear on the UN Security Council resolution. The policy of this Government towards a ceasefire has not changed. There is no ceasefire worthy of the name which does not, as item number one include the return of all the hostages. That is what we are working for, day and night.”
The PM also told the annual lunch reception that the Jewish state “must always be able to provide security and safety for its people.”
Reflecting on the fight to transform the party from that under Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer said of the wider Labour movement: “This movement has returned to our history and heritage which are inseparable from the state of Israel and our Jewish family.”
Delivering the keynote speech at Monday’s event the Prime Minister told 550 guests, including cabinet ministers and communal leaders:”The events of October 7 last year were a terrible reminder.
“Even in the one place the world promised they would be protected Jews are still not safe. The worst, and most deadly day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Innocent people targeted, taken hostage, murdered, just because they were Jewish.”
Calling for a two state solution with savages as saying to stop antisemitism as they still chant against Jews a joke!!! When the hostages haven't returned when thousands murdered by the peaceful ones? Starmer !!!! ? Labour friends of Israel You're dangerous ! https://t.co/GinBtB6PVI
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) December 3, 2024
Shame on @DavidLammy and @Keir_Starmer for telling us you care but doing nothing about it at the @_LFI lunch and playacted that hostage and British citizen #EmilyDamari mattered to you. I hope it was really uncomfortable sitting next to her mother, Mandy, knowing you have done… https://t.co/1LdWwKkiTd
— Fiona Sharpe 🧚🏻♀️🦄 (@SharpeFiona) December 2, 2024
David Lammy sat next to Mandy Damari at lunch. He hugged her and said he was a Tottenham fan like her hostage daughter Emily.
— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) December 2, 2024
He heard her ask for our govt to demand humanitarian aid to the hostages. He heard her ask for a simple proof of life.
This is what he wrote: https://t.co/J4LByR2VoX pic.twitter.com/rPJYKU3vCz
Tory leader @KemiBadenoch sports the yellow hostage ribbon as she meets Brit Mandy Damari whose 28-year-old daughter Emily has been held hostage in Gaza for more than a year. pic.twitter.com/AL5eoAel4l
— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) December 3, 2024
Einav Zangauker has been named as one of the BBC’s 100 most influential women of the year!
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) December 3, 2024
Einav is the mother of Matan Zangauker, who has been held hostage by Hamas for 424 days.
Bring Matan home NOW 🎗️ pic.twitter.com/If6z0hY7nE
The BBC has listed Hamas propagandist Plestia Alaqad in their list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2024. She lied about Israel bombing and killing 1,000 people at Al-Ahli hospital. Double the casualties even Hamas dared to lie about. pic.twitter.com/Ls21Wm5yuq
— Adam Sellers (@YisraelChaiAdam) December 3, 2024
‘Unless they are Jewish women and then I’ll completely ignore them.’ https://t.co/vvriWymdYZ
— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) December 2, 2024
With the horrific video of Edan Alexander released and the worst news about Omer Neutra’s death, the hostages are slipping into the dark. Now is the time to get them free.
— Heidi Bachram 🎗️ (@HeidiBachram) December 2, 2024
Please join us if you can tonight in Brighton & Hove to bring light to their plight. #FreeTheHostages… pic.twitter.com/rXmlQGCALp
Scottish school textbook teaches that Israel is ‘apartheid, colonial regime’
Classroom materials published by the largest teachers’ union in Scotland are riddled with hostile depictions of Israel, a JC investigation has revealed.Sydney University refers ‘antisemite’ academic to NSW Police after threats were made about Jewish group and Sky News hosts – but say they can’t sack him
They include one resource that juxtaposes images of suffering Palestinians with scenes of blissful Israeli life, such as a farmer harvesting Jaffa oranges.
The same text, published by Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), posits Palestinian children as innocent victims of Israeli military aggression and their Israeli counterparts as privileged youngsters who fear violence.
Another, non-EIS resource promoted by a Scottish local authority says “antisemitism is a European phenomenon” and accuses Israel’s “apartheid and settler colonial regime” of “genocide”.
Separately, in recent years Jewish schoolchildren in Scotland have reportedly faced a wave of antisemitic attacks and bullying over their perceived connection to Israel, forcing many families to consider leaving the country. One boy aged eight was called “evil”, accused of “stealing land” and physically attacked after a teacher played a CBBC Newsround segment on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2021. Another was targeted with swastikas and Hitler salutes.
Distraught parents of Jewish pupils who have suffered attacks and verbal abuse told the JC many had moved their children to different schools, while others were looking to move to Israel. There is no suggestion that there is any direct, causal link between the teaching materials and the violence.
Sydney University has referred one of its own academics to police after he posted online threats about a Jewish group and Sky News Australia hosts.
But the university has said it cannot sack its casual staff member Joel Griggs because the threats were made in a “personal capacity”.
Mr Griggs has posted prolifically about Israel in recent months, often equating Zionism with Nazism.
Several tweets focus on the conservative group Australian Jewish Association and its president David Adler, including a picture of Dr Adler in August with the caption: “The AJA are (sic) a fascist terror cell… If the government isn't going to move on these dangerous psychopaths, can we maybe pull something together on Twitter? Couldn't be too hard to find out where these people live."
In a post in July, he tweeted a picture of the group’s community engagement director Teneille Murray and wrote: “I think it’s about time that the fascist lunatics behind the terrorist AJA were put on a list and doxxed themselves”, before referring to Ms Murray as a “psychotic troll” and “SAf (South African) and Israeli”.
Mr Griggs has also posted obsessively about News Corp and Sky News Australia, including replying to one X post from the Sky News account featuring host Andrew Bolt in August with the comment: “Well (sic) get you one day, you seditious, traitorous scum."
"Not just Bolt, Panahi, Dean, and (Peta) Cretin, but the faceless shts like the one who wrote and posted this tweet. 'I was just doing my job' won't cut it when the hoi polloi finally start lopping off heads."
Dr Adler told Sky News the posts are clearly threatening.
Pro-Hamas student activists lost elections at the University of Sydney so they left buckets of bugs in the student union offices pic.twitter.com/vLM4R1Zrw3
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) December 3, 2024
Harvard’s Jewish chaplain slanders Israel
Alexander (“Shabbos”) Kestenbaum, the Jewish student activist at Harvard University who gained national prominence for speaking at the Republican convention in July, recently shared how the chaplains at Harvard are falling Jewish students.Rochester student gov president condemns arrests of students for anti-Semitic posters
On Nov. 18, masked Hamas supporters gathered in front of the Harvard Hillel and screamed at Jewish students trying to enter.
Kestenbaum tweeted: “After Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcomed here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
How did Greg Epstein, a Jewish chaplain at Harvard, and his fellow chaplains respond after the incident at the Hillel? They were silent for three days and then, finally, the Chaplain Office issued their statement that incredibly read as if the pro-Hamas intimidation rally was a legitimate religious expression!
Still, Epstein and company conceded, noting that to say somebody is “not welcome here” is problematic. Not because it’s antisemitic, but because some students might perceive it that way. “Student groups who are singled out in this way experience such language and acts of vandalism as a painful attack,” read the mealy-mouthed word salad from the Harvard chaplains.
It’s bad enough that Jewish students at Harvard have to contend with pro-Hamas demonstrators and faculty members, but now, chaplains have failed them, including a Jewish one.
Epstein, a member of the J Street Rabbinic Cabinet and a graduate of the rabbinical ordination program at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, was named chief chaplain at Harvard University back in 2021.
The president of the University of Rochester student government has expressed his opposition to the arrests of four students connected to recent campus ”Wanted” posters targeting pro-Israel faculty and staff.YOU CAN’T HIDE’: Mask-wearing activists heckle, threaten Jewish speaker at University of Michigan
On Nov. 24, the Campus Times reported on a Students’ Association Government meeting to address the university’s handling of the anti-Semitic posters and other recent bias-related occurrences. Most notably, the meeting concerned a discussion on a proposed resolution that would call out the university’s “Unprecedented And Disproportionate Response To Student Speech.”
”The University of Rochester and the Department of Public Safety, without any investigation or consult from various Jewish communities on campus, swiftly moved to labeled the posters as antisemitic, violent, and fear-mongering, and almost immediately involved law enforcement agencies ranging from the Department of Public Safety all the way to the United States Department of Justice through the FBI,” the statement says.
”While this statement nor this legislative body make no claims on the state of antisemitism other than standing firmly against it, we recognize and sympathize with the pain and fear felt by the University Jewish community at this time,” the document continues. “We simultaneously believe the punitive response by the University is broadly disproportionate and incredibly aggressive, and the move comes across as an attempt by the University of Rochester to censor any discussion of the University’s involvement in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.”
The Campus Times has reported that an amended resolution was passed by the student senate on Nov. 20.
Disruptive protesters at the University of Michigan shouted at and threatened a professor during a lecture on Jewish history.
Marc Dollinger, a Jewish Studies professor at San Francisco State University, came to the University of Michigan on Nov. 19 to deliver a lecture titled “Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing The Alliance In The 1960s.”
As Dollinger was speaking, mask-wearing activists came into the classroom and began yelling at him: “Dollinger, you can’t hide! Zionism is a crime!” and “Anti-Black and settler too, Zionist violence we see you!” J. reported.
Dollinger told J.: “It’s kind of strange for them to yell about Zionism when my talk is about civil rights. . . . It’s one thing if they were coming to debate the thesis of my book. But they weren’t. They were saying because you consider Zionism part of your Jewish identity, you should not be on the University of Michigan campus. . . . That’s antisemitism.”
The University of Michigan also called the incident anti-Semitic in a statement condemning the protestors’ actions, and stated that the lecture was disrupted even though it “did not include a pro-Israel message nor did it involve controversial issues related to the crisis in the Middle East.”
“Shouting down speakers for any reason is unacceptable at the University of Michigan. It violates our academic mission and our commitment to free speech and diversity of thought. Doing so in a way that, in this case, targeted a person because of their Jewish identity is particularly abhorrent and will not be tolerated,” the university’s statement added.
Dollinger also stated that the protesters “were not interested in de-escalation,” though they departed before police could arrive to escort them out, J. wrote.
BREAKING: The Yale College Council has announced it will hold a school-wide BDS referendum from Dec. 4-8. The proposed BDS referendum will only increase hostility towards Jewish students.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) December 2, 2024
Sign this petition demanding the school shut it down. https://t.co/pUCPjL4vbR
This is the most unbelievable part. Essentially anyone can be considered a journalist, according to @pressfreedom.
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 2, 2024
🔸️Member of the PFLP? Journalist.
🔸️Nukhba terrorist with an iphone? Journalist.
🔸️Hamas content creator? Journalist. pic.twitter.com/quRUowcfW6
Perhaps @cmdelaserna can tell us whether he reviewed any of the readily available open-source material showing that Muhammed Wishah is a terrorist? pic.twitter.com/KwgnvGLt6N
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 2, 2024
Here is just one example from a decade ago of @pressfreedom mourning and condemning the killing of a terrorist who posed as a journalisthttps://t.co/ZTuGUJS9Lo
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 2, 2024
Here are some of those examples of times I flagged terror-tied journalists to @pressfreedom and @jodieginsberg, who proceeded to ignore the evidence.https://t.co/Da1DgL6JHthttps://t.co/Sqnby7Yfvyhttps://t.co/IfMQstiY6Xhttps://t.co/tof2Ie3D5Vhttps://t.co/oaXjo7TVeK
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 2, 2024
Hezbollah are also supposed to withdraw north of the Litani River as called for by UN Res. 1701, while the Lebanese army moves in to secure the area.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 3, 2024
Why does @Independent remove vital context and skew the ceasefire to absolve Hezbollah of its commitments? pic.twitter.com/svoubUcAhF
Not just Hamas.
— Australian Jewish Association (@AustralianJA) December 3, 2024
Looks like taxpayer funded ABC will dispute the status of any Australian proscribed terrorist organisation as long as it targets Jews.
Defund ABC pic.twitter.com/ID6uWMPiKo
‼️ WATCH as Jeremy Corbyn behaves like a MOB BOSS, directing one of his thugs to remove a Jewish activist from the crowd gathered in a public space. ‼️
— Stop The Hate UK (@StopTheHate_UK) December 3, 2024
The activist is assaulted by Corbyn’s thug but the police refuse to act - something we are well used to now.
We call upon the… pic.twitter.com/xjaQgidpjg
Anika Zahir is one of the loathsome creeps who took great pleasure in abusing Jews at the JW3 Centre.
— habibi (@habibi_uk) December 3, 2024
So you will not be surprised to see the renowned “anti-racist” Jeremy Corbyn offering her words of encouragement at last Saturday’s anti-Israel protest. https://t.co/oN5umYRBVc pic.twitter.com/aAiRwjC1M2
Remember, extremists across the UK back the Taliban. https://t.co/BbnixQIXXc
— habibi (@habibi_uk) December 3, 2024
Wartime engagement ceremony in Gaza, with bride's dowry. Congratulation to Youssef and Samar.
— Imshin (@imshin) December 3, 2024
TikTok timestamp: 3 days ago#TheGazaYouDontSee
Links in 1st comment pic.twitter.com/sLCrXsovHV
Food aid sold for high prices in a Gaza market.
— Imshin (@imshin) December 3, 2024
Timestamp: 1 day ago#TheGazaYouDontSee
Link in 1st comment pic.twitter.com/zRGuamgIB2
Abu Hamza in North Gaza gets a whole carton of corned beef, 24 cans. The blurb says its the first time, but I've seen Abu Hamza get canned meat many times before. He's a Hamasnik who always gets the best free aid parcels.
— Imshin (@imshin) December 3, 2024
A few months ago he was complaining that canned food… pic.twitter.com/ceW1yD7ZQW
Fresh fish for sale in North Gaza.
— Imshin (@imshin) December 3, 2024
Timestamp: 1 day ago#TheGazaYouDontSee
Link in 1st comment pic.twitter.com/jV00dJ4Fdx
Cheeses and pickles for sale at az-Zawiyeh Market, Gaza City, North Gaza.
— Imshin (@imshin) December 3, 2024
TikTok timestamp: 1 day ago#TheGazaYouDontSee
Link in 1st comment pic.twitter.com/uEYXyj6Jrj
Jordanian Senate President Faisal Al-Fayez: Jordan Must Not Commit Suicide for the Sake of the Palestinian Cause, It Must Act Rationally and Avoid Becoming a Battleground pic.twitter.com/21D9Nv8U39
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) December 3, 2024
This was just published in Arabic on LebanonDebate website:
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) December 3, 2024
“A wide spread resentment and outrage among the Lebanese Christian community, following the memorial ceremony for Hassan Nasrallah at the site of his assassination in the Dahia. This event was heavily promoted, and few… pic.twitter.com/eiGG0KzWvV
"This is where Nasrallah was killed." The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, who was injured in the pager attack, visited earlier the place where Nasrallah was killed in the Beirut attack pic.twitter.com/djbokJLrSp
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) December 3, 2024
Conclusion based on document below:
— Hussain Abdul-Hussain (@hahussain) December 3, 2024
1- Hezbollah believes ceasefire is permanent (otherwise, wouldn't have started reconstruction process).
2- With all this spending, no one can dislodge Hezbollah as the most popular and dominant force in Lebanon, and especially among Lebanese… https://t.co/KSKufqDDx5
The Backstory Behind the Fall of Aleppo
Aleppo was never meant to fall.Seth Frantzman: Why is Iran claiming the US and Israel are behind Syria escalation?
A stunning offensive waged by two Turkish-backed forces over the space of the last five days has resulted in the conquering of Syria’s second-largest city and industrial hub, doing in under a week what more numerous and well-resourced anti-Assad rebels never managed. Yet Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) found themselves the beneficiaries of neighboring conflicts, an opportunistic patron in Ankara, the recent election in the United States and a dynastic dictatorship in Damascus weakened by civil war, sanctions and corruption.
HTS and the SNA had been training to take over more of Aleppo, with the hope of carving out further regime areas and securing their enclave in Idlib from Syrian Air Force bombardment.
There were two concurrent battles that started last Wednesday: The first, named “Repelling Aggression,” was led by HTS, and the second was the “Dawn of Freedom,” launched by the SNA, a collection of Islamist insurgents and former Free Syrian Army factions now refashioned into Turkish janissaries. The SNA managed to seize strategic military positions, such as the Kuweires air base; the Aleppo thermal power station, a key source of electricity located 15 miles east of Aleppo; and the defense factories at a military-industrial complex southeast of Aleppo. They swept in all but uncontested, barely any shots fired.
Coinciding with the dramatic takeover of Aleppo was a push by HTS into the countryside of northern Hama, a sweep of 39 villages in the space of 48 hours, and a similar Syrian troop withdrawal from the town of Maaret al-Numan, south of Idlib. HTS practically controls all of Idlib, and large parts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest governorate. HTS fighters briefly entered Hama City, but the takeover of yet another provincial capital appears to have been a diversion, aimed at delaying the arrival of regime reinforcements in Aleppo so that HTS could consolidate its hold there.
Overall, the regime suffered a complete breakdown in command and control and morale, leaving it unable to regroup or mount a counteroffensive. HTS overshot its own mark in a blitzkrieg that Western analysts see as a “catastrophic success.”
Turkey allowed the operation to happen owing to a unique concatenation of circumstances. First, the failure of attempted negotiations over reconciliation and normalization with Damascus. Second, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s desire for greater bargaining power with the incoming White House, given the expectation that Donald Trump will inevitably withdraw U.S. forces from northeastern Syria, as he’s long said he intends to do. Third, the prospect that Kurdish militias dominated by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, operating under the umbrella of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, will no longer pose a significant threat on Turkey’s southern doorstep so long as they aren’t protected by American F-16s from above and U.S. commandos from below. Fourth, the dilapidated state of Bashar al-Assad’s main ground forces, a consortium of militias assembled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been given a drubbing by Israel over the past year. Fifth, Russia’s redeployment of assets to Ukraine and its desire to see a “peace dividend” in Syria, beginning with the lifting of Western sanctions.
Garnering support from Turkey and RussiaSeth Frantzman: Will Iranian-backed militias in Iraq march to Syria? Orders awaited
Nevertheless, Iran often claims conspiracies to justify its interventions. Tehran wants the US to leave eastern Syria, where the Americans are fighting ISIS alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish force.
Iran wants to use the current war against HTS to not just get the US to leave; it also wants to mobilize attacks against the SDF.
Turkey agrees with Iran’s view in this context. Ankara has used the HTS attack to mobilize Syrian militias to attack Kurds.
Iran believes it can spread conspiracies about Israel and the US to garner support in Ankara and Moscow.
“I had detailed and important discussions with Bashar al-Assad and conveyed the message of the Islamic Republic of Iran about its full and firm support and backing for the Syrian government and its president.”
Just as the Syrian government was with us during the imposed war, we will also be with this country,” Araghchi said, according to Iranian state media.
“It was decided to continue these consultations and resume the Astana process, he said while referring to his talks with the Turkish counterpart, adding that a meeting of the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia, and Turkey will be held in Doha probably next week,” the report said.
Threatening Israel
Kataib Hezbollah has previously not only threatened Israel and worked closely with Hezbollah in Lebanon, it has also threatened Saudi Arabia with drones. The group is a serious threat.
“We believe the Iraqi government should take the initiative to send regular military forces in coordination with the Syrian government, as these groups pose a threat to Iraq’s national security and the region,” Kataib Hezbollah’s Abu Ali al-Asgari told Arab News on Tuesday, Iranian media reported. Asgari is usually described as head of Kataib Hezbollah’s security bureau.
“The head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces’ media directorate, Muhannad al-Aqabi, also said on Tuesday that the armed groups operating in Syria are pursuing foreign interests that seek to create instability in the region,” Iranian media also reported.
Iran has accused Israel of being behind attacks against the Syrian-regime forces by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni rebel group in Idlib that recently took control of Aleppo.
Iran may want to use Iraqi militias to bolster the Syrian regime. Tehran says it is worried that the current escalation in Syria could spill over to the region.
Moving Iraqi militias into Syria would be Iran’s way of both preventing spillover and adding fuel to the fire. Any significant movement would be a threat to Israel and to US forces in eastern Syria.
Iran is monitoring developments near Deir Ezzor and along the Euphrates River. According to reports, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces recently took control of several villages in this area that had been occupied by the regime. This could also lead to the deployment of Iranian-backed militias in the Deir Ezzor region.
🚨 NavalNews, a naval surveillance blog: Initial indications that Russia is evacuating its warships from the naval base at Tartus due to the rebel attack in Syria. According to the report, the movement of at least some of the Russian ships stationed at the base towards the sea…
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) December 3, 2024
Bill Roggio on why Hezbollah is not expected to fight in Syria — Fox LiveNOW
Bill joins Fox LiveNOW to discuss why Hezbollah has no interest in joining the hundreds of Iran-backed Iraqi fighters who crossed into Syria to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week.
Former IRGC Chief Mohsen Rezaee: The Terrorists in Aleppo Have Stabbed the Islamic Nation in the Back, This Is High Treason: Al-Jazeera TV Host: They Are Not Terrorists, Their Struggle Did Not Start Now Just Like Hamas’s Struggle Did Not Start on October 7 pic.twitter.com/pKBNM90vmU
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) December 3, 2024
Top IRGC General Mohammad-Reza Naghdi Threatens Israel with "Al-Aqsa Flood II," Says the Year Since October 7 Will Feel Like a "Walk in the Park" Compared to What’s Coming pic.twitter.com/1iU84WNnBH
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) December 3, 2024
As the Syrian crisis evolves, I want to remind you of a story.
— Faerie 🧡 (@LiquidFaerie) December 2, 2024
A 🧵
The story is about James Le Mesurier. He ran Mayday rescue who trained The White Helmets.
This story is pertinent, as I see many of you a following a woman called Vanessa Beeley.
Vanessa Beeley, a British…
I am, in fact, pro-Palestinians, pro-Israelis, and anti-Assad.
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) December 3, 2024
It’s almost as though opposing genocidal dictators goes hand in hand with supporting the peoples of the Middle East… pic.twitter.com/FvHCOt6sje
The Arab world’s media is full of footage of the atrocities in Syria. I won't get into details, but there are videos of war crimes committed by the rebels and the Assad regime against each other and Syrian civilians.
— יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) December 3, 2024
But in the Western world - silence.
Human rights… pic.twitter.com/yN3ifWQMh8
US sanctions 35 vessels, companies that are part of Iranian ‘shadow fleet’
The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Tuesday against 35 vessels and companies that it says are part of a “shadow fleet” that illegally delivers Iranian oil to other countries, destabilizing the region.Shin Bet finds 200 Iranian cyberattacks on Israeli personalities
“Iran continues to funnel revenues from its petroleum trade toward the development of its nuclear program, proliferation of its ballistic missile and unmanned aerial vehicle technology and sponsorship of its regional terrorist proxies, risking further destabilizing the region,” said Bradley Smith, acting U.S. under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department.
The U.S. government imposed sanctions on 21 ships, which it said “have collectively shipped tens of millions of barrels of oil for Iran.” It also sanctioned 14 companies that own or manage the vessels.
In recent months, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has uncovered approximately 200 efforts made by Iranian hackers to target civilians, the Shin Bet revealed on Monday.
The hacking was conducted via phishing attempts against various individuals, including politicians, academics, and media personalities, the security agency added.
The hackers reportedly sought access to the emails, computers, or smartphones of the individuals they were interested in hacking. Such operations would allow them to access information such as personal addresses or places where these individuals reside.
Data would serve to attack individuals
The Shin Bet said this would be done by forcing the attacked user to download an app or transfer them to a website requiring them to enter personal data.
The data could then be used to carry out attacks against those individuals through cells that were enlisted in Israel.
The Shin Bet added that it had thwarted nine attempts made by Israelis to carry out operations against the country on behalf of Iran.
There is no better graphic that better encapsulates Biden's foreign policy than this.
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 3, 2024
Truly staggering and unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/nvpmUnCg8n
California Imam Dr. Moustafa Al-Qazwini Calls on Senator Lindsey Graham to Retract Statement that Shiites Are Mandated to Kill All Jews: Shiites Are “Peaceful People,” They Don’t Attack Anyone pic.twitter.com/79Uvd5REjq
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) December 3, 2024
Toronto transit chief appeals to police as antisemitic graffiti skyrockets
Antisemitic graffiti has drastically risen in Toronto subway stations, leading Toronto Transit Commission interim CEO Gregory Percy to appeal to Toronto Police Service chief Myron Demkiw in a letter last Tuesday for increased aid to address the problem.'I want to put you in a gas chamber like the Jews': Offender's hatred of English people captured on video message to Denny woman
Hundreds of customers had complained to the commission about the antisemitic defacement of stop poles, shelters, and vehicles, particularly at the College, University, and Spadina stations, according to Percy. Responding to these incidents delayed other TTC work, such as system maintenance, and raised concern that residents would not feel safe taking public transit.
"We need your help to address these hotspots and take preventative action," said Percy. "I recognize the complexities of addressing these incidents and seek any guidance you can provide regarding effective deterrents, processes, or available supports to mitigate this troubling trend. We cannot allow this behavior to continue."
Percy offered to provide its data to the TPS Hate Crime Unit so that they could better focus on law enforcement where graffiti activity had "become chronic."
Toronto City Councilor James Pasternak called for an immediate response to the rise in antisemitic graffiti in a Wednesday X post.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs thanked Percy for raising alarm about the issue in response to Pasternak's publishing of the letter.
"Antisemitism and these actions cannot be allowed to continue; action must be taken to address and mitigate this proliferation of Jew-hatred," CIJA said on social media. "Enough is enough – we need an actionable plan to restore law and order and make Toronto safe for Jews."
An offender send threatening video messages to a woman telling her he wanted to put her in a gas chamber “like the Jews” and make her go “bye byes”.
Paul Dennett, 26, revealed his almost pathological hatred of the English through the video messages he sent, stating “make you go bye bye – that’s all I want to do with English people like you” and making references to “Jews” and a “gas chamber”.
He also said he wanted to “string her up like dog meat” and torture her.
The most worrying aspect of the offence was that he did not seem to show any remorse regarding what he had done and said.
Dennett appeared at Falkirk Sheriff Court last Thursday having admitted sending a video message to a woman containing threats of violence of a racial nature at an address in Hunter Gardens, Denny on September 30 last year.
Janet Macdonald, procurator fiscal depute, said: “The witnesses are both known to the accused, through the witnesses father who is in a relationship with the accused’s mother.
"The witness began to receive threatening messages and videos through Facebook Messenger. In the video the accused can be seen to state ‘I despise the English – I want to put you in a gas chamber like the Jews’
"He added ‘Make you go bye bye – that’s all I want to do with English people like you, put them in a gas chamber and make them go bye byes’ and ‘the things I want to do to people like you, you don’t want to know’.
Balaclava, Melbourne, Australia - Jewish man threatened with
— Menachem Vorchheimer (@MenachemV) December 3, 2024
“I will shoot you”
and labeled a
“Terrorist Motherf-cker”
Thanks for nothing @JacintaAllanMP & @VictoriaPolice @theheraldsun @australian @SkyNewsAust pic.twitter.com/ciZJXZpztH
We are aware of this social media post.
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) December 3, 2024
Our team has reported him to the police and is examining further legal action. pic.twitter.com/K9Sa8dgdSm
You don’t have to be Jewish to stand up to antisemitism.
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) December 3, 2024
Antisemitism and extremism don’t just affect Jews. They affect everyone.
On Sunday 8th December, we are marching in Central London.
Gather from 12:00 for a prompt start at 13:00.
Share this with family and friends and… pic.twitter.com/jMlWACViGk
This little Toronto synagogue has been targeted and vandalized SEVEN times.
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) December 3, 2024
Each time, they clean up, rebuild, and continue to welcome community. The Jewish people will not be chased away. pic.twitter.com/WixyMqKSED
The Fallen Soldier and the Fallen Coin
Sharing stories of generosity and bowls of traditional foods, members of the Indian Jewish Bnei Menashe community gather in northern Israel to remember Gary Lalhruaikima Zolat, an IDF staff sergeant who was killed in GazaOutstanding immigrants awarded by Sylvan Adams and Nefesh B’Nefesh
As other guests took their seats at round tables for a late-afternoon meal on Nov. 18, Avishai Hlondo tilted a serving bowl filled with sachek saba’i—cooked antram lettuce and beef intestines—so that the liquid dripped into a plastic cup, whose contents he then drank. Sitting next to him, Esther Thangluah similarly poured from a bowl of bitter leaves cooked with rice, seltzer, and salt into a cup and offered it to me.
The dishes and the beverages are traditional in Mizoram, the state in northeastern India from where nearly all of the approximately 200 people in the reception hall, or their parents, came to Israel beginning in the late 1980s. The meal, in the Jezreel Valley town of Afula in northern Israel, was held to memorialize a member of their community, Gary Lalhruaikima Zolat, whose face stared out from banners adorning a stage at the front of the room.
The gathering came at the close of the last day of shiva for Zolat, 21, a staff sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces’ Kfir brigade who was killed on Nov. 11 in a missile attack by Hamas terrorists in Jabalia in the Gaza Strip. He was the first soldier in the 4,000-member Indian Jewish community, known as Bnei Menashe, to be killed in Gaza or in Lebanon in the more than yearlong war. (Another Bnei Menashe member, Staff Sgt. Gary Hanghal, who also served in Kfir, was killed in September by a Palestinian terrorist who rammed his truck into Hanghal at a checkpoint near Eli in Samaria.)
“The pain of the family and of ourselves is one. We have a special connection as a community,” said Thangluah, who in 2006 moved to Israel with the Zolat family and 200 or so others from Bnei Menashe. “I’m crying all the time.”
Thangluah converted to Judaism three years before reaching Israel. She was raised Christian, but her grandparents spoke of having descended from the ancient Israelites and told her that, “like a prophecy, we must return to the land of our forefathers,” she said.
Thangluah’s story mirrored that of many Bnei Menashe members, especially the older ones, whom I interviewed at the meal, at a graveside memorial service two hours earlier, and at shiva four days before. Some mentioned the oral history transmitted in their families: that their paths went from the Assyrians’ exile of the 10 tribes (later dubbed the “lost tribes”) from the Kingdom of Israel some 2,700 years ago—in their case, the tribe of Menashe (Manasseh)—to China, Burma, and eventually India.
Most of those who immigrated to Israel in recent decades live in the northern communities of Tiberias, Akko, Nof Hagalil, Migdal Ha’emek, Beit Shean, and Afula Illit (adjacent to Afula and home to 80 Bnei Menashe families), as well as Beit El, Kiryat Arba, and Nitzan. All who immigrated converted first or once in Israel. Thousands more remain in India today, hoping to reach the Jewish state.
On Nov. 18, while their parents partook of the memorial meal, scores of the community’s teenagers and 20-somethings congregated outside the hall in a light drizzle, chatting in Hebrew and smoking cigarettes as might any other young Israelis. The adults inside spoke primarily in Mizo, their homeland’s mother tongue; the men covered their heads with kippot and the women with scarves, just like other religious-Zionist Israelis. Several dozen of the men assembled near the stage for Mincha services as the event began, and for Maariv prayers as the crowd dispersed at about 5:30 p.m.
Young and old said they felt they’d integrated well in Israeli society and weren’t made to seem different. But their distinctive look sometimes marks them as such.
“Our physical features are like Philippine and Thai people. Someone asked me if I’m looking for work as a caregiver,” said a smiling Thangluah, who is employed by a dental-implant company. Filipinos in the country typically work as home-care aides to elderly Israelis.
More than 600 people turned out in Jerusalem to honor 12 immigrants from English-speaking countries who were recipients of the 2023 and 2024 Sylvan Adams Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize acknowledging their outstanding contributions to Israeli society.
Among the honorees were veteran immigrants who arrived in the early years of the state, several mid-career professionals and a number of younger olim who are making their mark in the world of pro-Israel activism.
Foreign Ministry Special Envoy Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who hosts “The Quad” on JNS-TV, received the 2024 award for Israel advocacy. Fleur Hassan-Nahoum. Credit: Courtesy.
The Young Leadership Prize was awarded to Emily Schrader, news anchor at ILTV News and a frequent guest on JNS-TV.
Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams, a major supporter of Nefesh B’Nefesh who has sponsored the Bonei Zion Prize since its inception in 2014, told JNS prior to the ceremony that he was particularly proud this year to honor “these magnificent people who have contributed so much.”
He noted that “it’s been a very hard year for us, so we could use a shot in the arm,” adding, “It’s good to have a beautiful ceremony like this and honor all of the beautiful investments that these worthy recipients have made in the country.”
Awards for 2023 were given for achievements in education to Sally Reidman, founder and president of the Reidman College of Complementary & Integrative Medicine; for science and medicine to Prof. Carmi Z. Margolis, founding dean of Ben-Gurion University Medical School for International Health; for culture, arts and sport to Peter Kurz, CEO of the Israel Baseball Association and general manager of national and Olympic teams; for global impact to Lt. Col.(Res.) Danny Grossman, chairman of CMBM-Israel; for community and non-profit to Shari Mendes, founder and director of the Israel Lemonade Fund; and to Hassan-Nahoum for Israel advocacy.
The 2024 recipients include: Phyllis Heimowitz, co-founder of A Partner Left Behind-The Partners of Fallen IDF Soldiers, for community and non-profit; Eylon Levy, head of the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office, for global impact; and Dr. Debra Gershov-West, director of the emergency department at Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital, for contributions to science and medicine.
Honored to win the Bonei Zion Prize for Global Impact, but I couldn't do this without my amazing team
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) December 3, 2024
This #GivingTuesday, I'm donating the prize money to the non-profit I founded, @israelcitizenspox
💸 Please donate and help us speak up for Israel: https://t.co/NQ5ZevPeTy pic.twitter.com/QRMw3wjfG6
This #GivingTuesday, the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons' Office aims to raise $180,000. I'm kicking us off by donating my Bonei Zion Prize money. Please help us speak up for Israel.
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) December 3, 2024
Donate: https://t.co/NQ5ZevPeTy pic.twitter.com/MYs50OLyFm
Young Zionist Voices: Book Launch & Panel - Z3 Conference 2024
Explore the voices shaping the next generation of Zionist leadership in this impactful panel from the Z3 Conference 2024.
Moderated by Eylon Levy, listen in on this conversation between Gen Z Jewish leaders and contributing writers to the book Young Zionist Voices: Alissa Bernstein, Charlie Covit, Maya Platek, and Avi Gamulka.
From campuses worldwide to the streets of Jerusalem, these young leaders tackle the pressing challenges facing Jewish and Zionist identity in the aftermath of October 7. They discuss the surge in antisemitism, the evolving relationship between American Jews and Israel, and the importance of reclaiming and redefining Zionism for their generation. This dynamic discussion sheds light on the resilience of young Jews around the world in navigating hostility and division while embracing their Jewish and Israeli identities with pride and purpose. A must-watch for those invested in the future of young Jewish leadership and Zionism.
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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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