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Friday, December 27, 2024

12/27 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The real message of Chanukah; Europe’s blindspot over antisemitism; Mila Kunis reflects on her USSR-repressed Judaism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The real message of Chanukah
Of course, divisions weaken a community and undermine its defences. But the real issue is the reason for such division. Under both Greek and Roman rule, it was that too many Jews had forgotten what they were.

And just like today, under both the Greeks and the Romans it was universalism that weakened the Jews. Scorned and vilified for their particularism and drawn into the embrace of a less demanding culture, they became vulnerable as a result to threats of both assimilation and external attack.

Most of today’s diaspora Jews who live in western societies that disdain or even hate them choose not to fight back. Instead, they keep their heads below the parapet, pretend that the threats aren’t as bad as they actually are or choose to suck up to the governing classes who merely flick them aside. Far worse, some of these Jews actively support the ideologies that have the Jewish people in their sights.

This way lies assimilation and thus destruction. To avoid that fate, Jews have to fight for who they are and what they stand for.

Liberals will respond that, since the opposing side thinks precisely the same, who is to say who is correct? From that they conclude that fighting to defeat the other side is always wrong.

This is the trap of moral relativism, which is based on the belief that objective truth doesn’t exist and that everything is instead a matter of subjective opinion.

But that’s a lethal error. There is indeed such a thing as objective reality.

There really are abuses of power. There really is a difference between aggressors and victims. Iran really does pose a demonstrable threat to Jewish life and the survival of Israel. Assimilation really has caused huge swathes of Jews to disappear as Jews.

Not all division between Jews is “baseless hatred”. Sometimes, if one side wins over the other the Jewish people will be demonstrably harmed. Such situations require not consensus but victory for the side that would best prevent such harm.

Of course, agreement is desirable. But if Jews were to agree to a course of action that would result in their wipeout, maybe that kind of agreement wouldn’t be such a good idea.

Conflict is undesirable, division is dangerous, and war is hell. But the alternative may be far worse.
Aviva Klompas: Jew hatred is not just a Jewish problem. It's a Canadian problem
So far, it has been divine intervention — or perhaps the random mercy of circumstance — that has prevented these attacks from ending in the kind of horrific tragedy witnessed by Jewish communities elsewhere, such as the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 where eleven were killed and six were wounded, some of whom were Holocaust survivors. This fragile luck, however, is not a substitute for government policy or action. Each new act of hate brings us closer to an unthinkable outcome, one that words of outrage and condolence will never undo.

Instead, antisemitism has been allowed to fester and grow. Canada is failing to learn from history. In 1930s Europe, antisemitism didn’t stop at destroying Jewish lives; it undermined the very fabric of society, paving the way for totalitarian regimes and eroding the democratic values we now hold dear until Canada and the other Allied powers went to war to destroy that threat.

Hate is a pollution that doesn’t remain confined to one group or one place. It spreads, infecting everything it touches.

That poison is already visible on Canada’s streets. Masked mobs draped in keffiyehs march through major cities, burning Canadian flags, vandalizing monuments, and intimidating anyone who dares to disagree with their ideology. What begins as targeted hatred against Jews inevitably grows into a broader assault on the freedoms and values that define our society.

These attacks do not occur in a vacuum. Each unpunished act of violence and each ignored plea for protection sends a dangerous message: that hatred and bigotry are permissible.

This global surge in Jew-hatred is inexcusable everywhere, but its prevalence in Canada is particularly shameful. Canada was the first nation to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy in 1971, later enshrining it in law through the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988. Canadians pride themselves on being champions of diversity and tolerance, yet today, what they are tolerating is violence and bigotry.

For over two decades, Kehillat Shaarei Torah was a second home for me. To see it attacked again and again is heartbreaking and terrifying. Jewish Canadians are resilient, but resilience alone is not enough. We cannot fight this battle alone.

Canada’s leaders have failed Jewish Canadians. They have failed to protect synagogues and schools from attack. They have failed to hold perpetrators accountable. They have failed to take meaningful steps to deter further violence.

Most damningly, they have failed to recognize that Jew-hatred is not just a Jewish problem — it is a Canadian problem.

If our leaders do not act — if they do not prioritize the safety and dignity of Jewish Canadians — it won’t just be the Jewish community that suffers. Canada, as a whole, will pay the price. Hate, when left unchecked, corrodes the foundation of any society.

History is watching. The Jewish community is waiting. The time for action is now.
Centenarian Jewish D-Day veteran ‘doubts’ sacrifice was worth it
Mervyn Kersh, a Jewish Londoner and D-Day veteran who turned 100 on Dec. 20, has lived through some of modern history’s most tumultuous chapters.

But the events of recent months have stirred fears in Kersh unlike anything that he has felt since he stormed the Normandy beaches 80 years ago, Kersh told JNS in several interviews in the last few months.

Fears for the destruction of Israel—a place this British patriot also calls home—and about antisemitism on display in his native England.

Kersh, who fought with the British Army during the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, now fears both for the safety of the Jewish state and for that of Jews in the United Kingdom. (He celebrated his 100th birthday with family in London.)

Looking back on his role in helping liberate Western Europe, Kersh has mixed feelings, not about the bravery of his comrades or the necessity of the war but about whether the sacrifices he and others made still hold the value they intended.

“I thought what we did was worth it,” he told JNS. “I have my doubts now.”

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which Kersh calls his “first home” even though he has never lived there, and the resurgence of Jew-hatred in Europe and beyond have left him questioning whether his generation’s hard-fought victories have been eroded.

“Our politicians are repeating the same cowardly lack of military action as those politicians did in the mid-1930s,” Kersh said about the British position on Israel’s fight against its enemies. “All words but no action while the enemy was still relatively weak.”


Europe’s blindspot over antisemitism
In November the Dutch soccer club Ajax of Amsterdam played a cup tie against the Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv and as a consequence what the media carefully call “pro-Palestinian” thugs attacked the visiting Jewish supporters, with five hospitalized and twenty to thirty more injured. Many of the attacks were carried out by young men on mopeds — according to one Dutch politician, Moroccan young men on mopeds, which is about as close to actually identifying who these perpetrators might have been as you will get. The Israeli government reacted with shock, booking two planes to bring the soccer fans home from the fetid ghetto that parts of the decent, liberal Netherlands has become. Dutch politicians lined up to do the platitude stuff. The reliably witless Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, was among the first out of the blocks: “I strongly condemn these unacceptable acts. Anti-Semitism has absolutely no place in Europe. And we are determined to fight all forms of hatred.”

Just read that vacuous bilge again — the bloodless and vague “unacceptable acts” and ending with a commitment she does not remotely mean to keep. Oh, and antisemitism has absolutely no place in Europe? Au contraire, Ursula. It has many, many places, largely as a consequence of policies enacted by people like you. So, in that crescent (fittingly) of Europe from northwest France, through Belgium to Rotterdam and the Hague — and now arcing further north, to Malmö — these are the places where a large diaspora of Muslims from the Maghreb and the Levant have settled. Hey, it’s just occurred to me — gee, could there perhaps be some connection? If there is you can bank on the mainstream politicians and the mainstream media not to make it.

But there is plenty of antisemitism in London (and indeed Manchester), of course, and Britain has done nothing about it. Every time the Hamas groupies and their useful idiots from the white liberal left chant about rivers and seas they are too ignorant to identify, London’s Jews are targeted and feel afraid. There are fewer than 150,000 Jews in London, but over the past year there have been more than 2,000 attacks upon them. The woman who was dragged to the ground and punched in the face for putting up a poster demanding the return of the hostages. Or just the sort of thing this young Jewish bloke had to put up with on a Tube train last November: “I was talking to my friend and then next to me I hear someone say ‘pigs.’ The guy next to me was on FaceTime and says, ‘I’m on the train with a bunch of dirty Jewish pigs, scumbags and baby killers.’” If that had happened to someone from any other race, imagine the furor and the demands for retribution.

Please don’t believe this is all about Israel’s actions in Gaza, even if it is used as an excuse. It is a deep-seated problem located at the very center of Islam and it was in evidence well before October 7, 2023. It has been a recurrent theme. Whenever I have interviewed Palestinian activists they almost always say, “off the record,” “Well, there’s a reason everyone hates them, my fren’.” And then the lies come out, the incredibly familiar lies, the lies that take us right back to Treblinka and Sobibor. Islamism bought into Hitler and cannot yet bring itself to renounce him. The ideology of Hamas is drawn directly from Mein Kampf and the Third Reich, in which the Jews are to blame for everything — communism, capitalism, all warfare, the enslavement of other races, controlling the media, et cetera, ad infinitum — and must therefore be exterminated. Genocide, then: explicit and very clear. And yet we are weirdly afraid to articulate this obvious point.

If we really believe that antisemitism has no place in Europe, then can we point the finger a little more? And mean it when we say “never again.”
Selective moral outrage causes double standard across Middle East
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, over 500,000 people have been killed, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians targeted by the Syrian regime.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights reports that, as of July 2020, at least 3,196 Palestinian refugees were killed by regime forces. Other estimates place the number of Palestinian refugees who have died due to war-related incidents in Syria at over 4,022. A UNRWA spokesperson highlighted the dire situation, stating, “Palestinians are among those worst affected by the Syrian conflict.”

Yet, the pro-Hamas rallies and encampments express no outrage on behalf of Syrian Palestinians. The intensity of protests we now witness for Gaza is unprecedented compared to reactions to other conflicts, even those with far greater casualties and destruction over much longer durations, such as the Syrian civil war.

Jewish communities worldwide have become all too accustomed to the double standards and antisemitism driving many “social justice movements.” But the selective moral outrage and indifference to the atrocities in Syria reveal a new level of hypocrisy. The disproportionate focus on criticizing Israel, while ignoring Assad’s crimes – even when his regime murdered Palestinians – lays bare the antisemitism at the core of these movements.

The crimes of the Assad regime demand accountability. Sednaya Prison and the broader network of atrocities have exposed a brutal chapter in Syria’s history, one that the international community has largely chosen to ignore.

If social justice warriors truly care about justice, they must broaden their focus beyond selective targets and confront the brutal realities of regimes like Assad’s. Anything less is moral bankruptcy.
B’nai B’rith ‘troubled’ by pope’s anti-Israel remarks
The more than 180-year-old nonprofit B’nai B’rith International stated on Thursday that it is “troubled” by Pope Francis’s remarks that “obscure key facts about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas-led terrorists.”

The pope said that the Jewish state is machine-gunning children in the Gaza Strip and that “this is cruelty. This is not war.” His comments come “particularly during a holiday season that should unite the world’s religious communities and renew determination to address the actual sources of suffering globally,” B’nai B’rith stated.

“B’nai B’rith joins all people of decency in yearning fervently for genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East and throughout the world. We empathize with all innocent people experiencing pain and hardship, including as a tragic by-product of war,” it stated. “However, especially coming from the world’s most visible faith leader at the start of Christmas, it is essential that pronouncements on the difficult and complex Gaza hostilities be accurate, open-eyed and fair.”

“Israel does not ‘machine-gun’ or target children. Any suggestion otherwise is a profoundly damaging misrepresentation—clearly liable to stoke antisemitism and encourage anti-Israel jihadists to continue tactics of deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way,” it added.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has not mentioned terror attacks on the Jewish state nor Iran’s sponsorship of those attacks, B’nai B’rith stated.

“We urge our friends and partners in the Catholic Church to exercise due care in the rhetorical treatment of Israel—the Middle East’s only democracy and an outpost of religious freedom and diversity in a very turbulent and challenging region,” it added.
Editorial: We can’t allow fight against antisemitism to falter
More than a year after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of innocents in Israel and a spring roiled by an explosion of antisemitism on campuses and streets around the country, we’re still dealing with fresh incidents of anti-Jewish speech.

After a fall conference of Massachusetts Computer Using Educators included a discussion in which speakers referenced “Israeli genocide” and “Israeli apartheid,” with one panelist suggesting that the teaching of the Holocaust has been one-sided, local educators and the Anti-Defamation League called for an apology. Five board members from the ed tech group resigned last week.

MassCUE Board President Casey Daigle had this to say: “MassCUE regrets that the language used by a member of our panel was hurtful.

“We apologize for any offense or harm that it caused. The organization is still assessing the fallout from this incident.”

“We apologize for any offense” is the “thoughts and prayers” of damage-control rhetoric. It’s become part of the playbook used by universities and other organizations receiving blowback from people rightly disgusted by antisemitic speech and actions.

Harvard, Tufts, MIT, and Columbia University, to name a few, were hotbeds of anti-Israel encampments and protests earlier this year, and students found ideological kinship with professors.

In July, Columbia University removed three administrators and put them on indefinite leave after finding that text messages they exchanged during a campus discussion about Jewish life “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes,” the Associated Press reported.

“Antisemitism has no place in the Harvard community,” a Harvard spokesperson said this spring. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to combating antisemitism and hate, in whatever form it manifests itself.”
Shelf censorship: How US publishing boycotts Israel and its supporters
Founded in 1922 by literary giants such as Willa Cather, Eugene O’Neill, and Robert Frost, PEN America aimed to protect writers’ free expression and ensure the publishing industry embraced diverse viewpoints without fear of persecution or censorship.

But times, as one beloved Jewish poet wrote, are changing: This February, more than 1,500 organization members signed a letter demanding immediate condemnation of Israel and calling on the organization to “wake from its passive, lukewarm, fence-sitting, self-satisfied and mediocre approach and take concrete steps against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

After accusing Israel of systematic and deliberate murder without any factual support from writers or journalists, the letter left little doubt about required action: “We demand PEN America issue an official condemnation naming the killers exactly: Israel, a colonialist Zionist entity funded by the US government.”

Again, one might expect a serious organization to state unequivocally that anyone truly committed to literature cannot engage in one-sided propaganda, especially when that side represents a murderous terrorist organization. One might expect champions of free expression to rise against those who persecute others for their identity or beliefs. One might expect a forceful statement that boycotts fundamentally contradict art’s universal spirit, which should evoke common human emotions and bridge all divides.

But PEN America did none of this. It didn’t even defend itself by citing its numerous anti-Israel statements. Instead, the organization capitulated to pressure and issued a sharp statement calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Even this proved insufficient: More than half of the organization’s writer and editor members announced they would refuse nomination for PEN America’s official awards, the organization’s annual crown jewel.

“Writers with conscience,” several departing members wrote in a statement, “don’t debate facts. There is truth and there is fiction, and the truth is that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

And PEN America, they continued, “normalizes genocide” by “giving voice to Zionists.”

The departing members also demanded immediate termination of the organization’s head, Susan Nossel, a Jewish woman, due to her “long-standing commitment to Zionism.”

The upheaval achieved its goal: for the first time in almost three decades, the organization announced cancellation of its main festival due to protests.

Seize the day
“There’s no question that Jews are being excluded from the publishing industry at every level and rank—from editors at publishing houses unwilling to publish Jewish books, to literary media outlets refusing to cover Israeli or Jewish books and authors, major festivals no longer inviting Jews, and down to bookstores now boycotting Jews.”

The speaker is Adam Bellow, a legendary American editor and publisher. After an extensive career at prestigious houses such as Doubleday, HarperCollins and St. Martin’s Press, and after discovering and nurturing some of America’s most successful authors’ careers, Bellow decided he could no longer tolerate the industry in its current form.

This was no easy decision, considering not only his own achievements but also that his father—Nobel Prize laureate Saul Bellow, one of the most important Jewish-American authors of all time—helped to elevate the industry and remained among its most cherished figures for decades.

“In a sense,” Bellow told Israel Hayom, “what’s happening now to Jews in the publishing industry represents a tremendous injustice. This industry was institutional and dormant, the exclusive domain of WASP gentlemen. Jews arrived and transformed the industry into a global powerhouse, just as we did in Hollywood and other industries. And now, we face exactly the same discrimination we see in so many other industries we helped elevate, like universities.”

Which leads us, Bellow continued, to a difficult choice.

“Now we Jews in all these industries excluding us have exactly two options,” he said. “Do we stay and fight to reclaim positions earned honestly through hard work, or do we leave and establish our own parallel institutions, as we did in the first decades of modern Jewish existence in America?

“I won’t presume to judge either way, but I can tell you what I did—which was to leave quickly and establish my own publishing house, which is thriving. So now, as someone once said, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.”
‘Judenrein’ Hollywood? The troubling trend in Jewish representation
Every year, as Hollywood shuts down for the winter holidays, an unassuming list makes its way into executive inboxes. “The Black List,” as it has been known for the last two decades, ranks the most popular unproduced screenplays of the year, according to the executives and producers who read them.

Getting a screenplay on this list can be a career-defining moment for a screenwriter. Ranking near the top of the list can fast-track a project to production. Many “Black List” screenplays have been produced, and a notable percentage have gone on to win Oscars. For a screenwriter like me, the list is a valuable source of industry intel. What stories are execs responding to this year? Who are the agents and managers shepherding these scripts?

I always scan the list for the kinds of stories that I like to write—elevated genre fare, mostly, as well as Jewish content. Without being able to read the screenplays themselves, I can only make my assessments of the screenplays based on the short loglines that describe them. The list usually includes some films with overtly Jewish content, typically Holocaust dramas or stories that center on antisemitism. This year, in the long shadow of the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, I was particularly curious to see how Hollywood’s selective appetite for Jewish fare might have shifted. Here’s what I found.

Almost nothing.

Not even the usual clichés of Holocaust survival or the Jewish high-achiever biopic.

I found only one logline that might have some Jewishness to it. A script called “Bridgehampton” by Jeremy Leder. Here’s the logline: “Recently dumped Ezra Green accidentally brings a terminally ill woman home to Bridgehampton for a long weekend with his eccentric family. Don’t judge—he needs to cope with his estranged father who just got out of white-collar prison.”

The stereotypical Jewish coding here goes far beyond Ezra’s name. He’s “recently dumped” and “accidentally” brings a terminally ill woman home. So, he’s nebbish and inept, particularly when it comes to his relationships with women, see the persona popularized by Woody Allen. He’s from the Hamptons, so obviously he’s wealthy. His family is “eccentric” (read: “Jewish” and “other.”) And his father just got out of white-collar prison (“financial crimes,” Bernie Madoff, anyone?)

I don’t want to cast aspersions on Leder’s screenplay. For all I know, the story draws from his own lived experiences, and it might be a valuable piece of a diverse Jewish tapestry. But that this might be the only Jewish story that Hollywood execs found compelling enough to include on the “Black List” this year speaks volumes about the industry’s skittishness around Jewish content.


Baltimore synagogue event calling Israel ‘apartheid’ roils community
The Baltimore Jewish community continues to face turmoil after the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, a Reform synagogue, hosted an event that accused Israel of being an “apartheid regime” that has committed “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.

Forty Baltimore-area rabbis and Jewish community leaders signed an open letter on Monday saying that the backlash directed at BHC, its leaders and its clergy “crossed the line” after it decided to host speakers from the left-wing Israeli organization Standing Together.

“Some in the community chose to protest the program that was scheduled to take place, and that is certainly their right,” the community leaders wrote. “We are troubled, however, by the language and tone too many community members used in the days leading up to the event. Some made comments on social media and through emails to Baltimore Hebrew Congregation that were hurtful, hateful and filled with venom and vitriol.”

The example they cited as “most venomous” was a comment saying that “if the leadership of BHC ever needs pagers, I know a good supplier,” alluding to the September explosion of thousands of Hezbollah’s electronic devices that has widely been attributed to Israel.

The call for civility comes after the New Israel Fund organized the Standing Together event at BHC on Dec. 12.

Standing Together’s co-directors, Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood, accused Israel of being an “apartheid regime” that has committed “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Within Israel, we’re not talking about apartheid, but the situation in the West Bank and Gaza is different,” Daood said. “This is an apartheid regime.”

Daood, who is an Israeli citizen and a Palestinian, claimed that Israel was not a democracy because, in the words of her civics teacher, “Israel is a democracy for its Jews, and it’s Jewish for its Palestinians.”

‘These words paint a one-sided picture’

During the event, one woman spoke out in protest, throwing what appeared to be flyers with photos of Israeli hostages who have been held in captivity in Gaza since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, after Green called for a ceasefire. “Shame on you,” she shouted as she was led away by security.
The death throes of the university are upon us
Academia’s obsession with exposing structural racism has a blind spot for anti-Semitism, however. This year kicked off with the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, following her Supreme Court testimony in response to the rise of campus anti-Semitism. Her legalistic defence of students calling for the genocide of Jews made her position untenable. But British universities have also witnessed an alarming rise in anti-Semitism this year. Jewish students were pelted with eggs after an event with the chief rabbi, and swastika graffiti was found in lavatories at the National Union of Students conference.

Yet here, too, university managers struggle to get a grip on the problem. Jew hatred is a feature, not a bug, of politicised humanities departments, obsessed as they are with ‘decolonisation’ and critical race theory. One lecturer has described how student essays openly comparing Jews to ‘scurrying vermin’ and accusing them of being ‘complicit in genocide’ were not critiqued but praised and rewarded with high marks by her colleagues.

Clearly, not all academics share such views. The problem is that far too many who disagree choose to stay silent. A recent global survey suggests that around 70 per cent of academics are self-censoring out of ‘concern about the impact of students being offended’ and ‘the fear of upsetting colleagues’.

Let’s hope that, in 2025, professors find it within themselves to get a bit braver. Of course, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, passed under the previous Conservative government, could have helped with this. But in July, Labour’s new education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, announced via social media that the current government will not implement the legislation.

Cowardly professors send the wrong message to students, too many of whom already seem only too willing to embrace cancel culture. Take the recent experience of Leeds University student Connie Shaw. She was suspended from her role volunteering at her university radio station after fellow students complained about her gender-critical views.

Next year will be tough for higher education. But universities brought many of the problems they now face down on their own heads. By abandoning academic rigour, the transmission and pursuit of knowledge and the preservation of cultural heritage, they have been left with little defence against budget cuts, falling student numbers and increased costs. Yet universities limp on, sucking up bright students and critically minded lecturers – young people eager to learn and academics keen to teach interesting and engaging content. Here’s hoping that, in 2025, their voices come to be heard more loudly.
‘May 2025 Be the End of Israel’: Australian Writer Calls for Destruction of Jewish State to Mark New Year
An award-winning Australian writer has called for the destruction of Israel and the “death cult of Zionism” in what was apparently meant to be a message of hope and optimism for the new year.

“May 2025 be the end of Israel. May it be the end of the US-Israeli imperial scourge on humanity. May we see the abolishment of the death cult of Zionism and the end of US empire and finally a world where the slaughter, annihilation, and torture of Palestinians is no longer daily routine,” Randa Abdel-Fattah posted on X/Twitter on Wednesday evening.

“And to achieve that,” she continued, “is to snowball collective liberation because the tentacles of Western imperialism oppress and dehumanize us all. May every baby slaughtered in Zionism’s genocide haunt you who openly support or acquiesce through your gutless silence.”

Abdel-Fattah’s tweet came in response to a social media post by the Turkish public broadcaster TRT World saying that three newborn Palestinian babies died from extreme cold in Gaza, where Israel has been fighting Hamas since the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023.

Abdel-Fattah, a lawyer and Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, is one of Australia’s most prominent pro-Palestinian activists. She has also written 12 books, for which she has won multiple awards..

The Australian Jewish Association lambasted Abdel-Fattah for her comments, responding that “evil hate speech like this has no place in Australia.”


South African Ambassador to U.S. Ebrahim Rasool Boasted of Hamas Leader’s Autograph
South African ambassador to the U.S. Ebrahim Rasool boasted last year that he owned a keffiyeh that had been signed by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Rasool posted on Facebook on September 23, 2023 — two weeks before the Hamas terror attacks of October 7:
The story of 3 scarves: on the left is a gift from Yasser Arafat in 1990 when I was a fly on the wall as he & Madhiba reunited in Cairo after 30+ years; in the middle is one given to me by [Islamist] Shaykh Raaid Salah, leader [sic] of the Palestinians in Israel, when I hosted a dinner for him at Leeuwenhof [the governor’s mansion in the Western Cape Province]; and the one on the right is signed by Ismail Haniyyeh, and presented to me as I was part of an ITI programme with Hamas to share strategic wisdom in the face of Arab “normalisation”, further Israeli occupation , & US approval.

Haniyeh was killed in Tehran, Iran, in July, in an operation for which Israel has taken credit. Raid Salah is not the “leader” of “Palestinians” in Israel, but rather the leader of a radical Islamist movement that has been banned.

The Middle East Forum documented the history of Rasool’s flirtations with extremist Islamic groups. He is known as a moderate in the context of South African politics, but has courted the support of radicals who want to destroy Israel.

Rasool served as an ambassador during the Obama administration, and was recently reappointed to the position.


'We want peace': Damascus gov. says Syria wants better relations with Israel
"Our problem is not with Israel," Maher Marwan, the new governor of Damascus, told NPR on behalf of new Syrian leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

Following their rapid 11-day takeover of Syria, the leaders of Al-Qaeda affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) are looking to consolidate their international legitimacy as the 'new Syria.'

In a meeting with NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Marwan said it was "natural" that Israel had concerns about the new Syrian government and that as a result of this "fear," Israel "advanced a little, bombed a little."

Marwan added that the new Syrian administration doesn't "want to meddle in anything that will threaten Israel's security or any other country's security."

US mediation
Going a step further than Julani's previous statements, Marwan called on the United States to facilitate better relations with Israel.

A US official told NPR that the US relayed HTS's message to Israel.

"We want peace, and we do not want to be an opponent to Israel or an opponent to anyone, Marwan concluded.


‘Houthis are simply insane’: In Tel Aviv, Yemeni activist explains current conflict
Sweden-based Yemeni activist Luai Ahmed, 31, has become something of a celebrity in Israel. As he sits down for this interview in a Tel Aviv café, a woman at a nearby table gestures to attract his attention, pointing at her phone screen and exclaiming: “I was just looking at one of your videos!”

An obligatory selfie follows.

Ahmed’s fame stems from his prolific social media activity in support of the Jewish state after the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023. He has gained over 190,000 followers on Twitter, and many of his videos have gone viral.

An October 2024 clip, in which he debated American college students on the war in Gaza while dressed in traditional Yemeni garb, garnered two million views on Twitter.

Ahmed fled Yemen in 2014, shortly after the Iran-backed Houthi rebels – an extremist ethno-religious group from northern Yemen, affiliated with Shiite Islam – hijacked the pro-democracy Arab Spring revolution that had erupted in the country in 2011, toppled the government, and took over the capital, Sanaa.

Today, the Houthis rule over northwestern Yemen, controlling approximately one-third of the country’s territory and two-thirds of its population of 34 million. Designated as a terrorist group by many in the West, they have condemned Yemen to international isolation, as the country is blacklisted from trading with much of the outside world and from receiving humanitarian aid.

Already one of the poorest and least developed countries before the 2014 coup, Yemen appears to be sinking into a never-ending downward spiral.


Iran weakest since revolution, ripe for regime change
Its “Axis of Resistance” cracking, most recently with the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran has never been as vulnerable since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, observers tell JNS.

With Iran’s leadership facing an emboldened Israeli military, the second coming of Donald Trump, internal fissures and a crisis of confidence among its people, experts say here lies a chance for regime change.

The extent of the damage to Iran’s drive for regional domination is evidenced by the remarks of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in a speech on Dec. 11 admonished supporters to “not become depressed, hopeless or heartbroken,” and on Dec. 22 denied that Iran even had proxies.

Tehran has lost Hamas and Hezbollah, its major ally—Syria—and its primary air defenses to Israeli airstrikes, making any Israeli attack potentially even more effective. Moreover, despite its wealth of energy resources, Iran is in the midst of an energy crisis.

“This is a golden opportunity,” Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told JNS on Tuesday, outlining the possibility of a one-two punch, with the U.S. imposing economic sanctions and Israel delivering military blows.

A U.S. prepared to inflict “Trump maximum pressure 2.0” and a newly confident Israel tackling Iran militarily “puts us in a good position,” he said.

Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-educated political scientist and expert on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, agrees. “Iran is currently at its weakest point since the 1979 Islamic Revolution,” he told JNS on Tuesday. It’s “vulnerable both internally and externally.”

Bashar Assad’s fall is “a catastrophic loss for Iran’s leadership,” Rafizadeh said, not only because Syria served as a conduit for Iran’s proxies, but because the Iranian people now perceive the regime as “increasingly vulnerable, which emboldens anti-government sentiment and protests.”
Jailing journalist ‘latest example’ of ‘brutal, cruel’ Iranian regime
The Iranian regime arrested Italian journalist Cecilia Sala on Dec. 19, the Italian Foreign Ministry, which is “working with the Iranian authorities to clarify Cecilia Sala’s legal situation and to verify the conditions of her detention,” stated on Friday.

Paola Amadei, the Italian ambassador to Iran, “paid a consular visit to verify the conditions and status of Sala’s detention,” the Italian government stated.

“The journalist’s family was informed of the outcome of the consular visit. Earlier, Sala was allowed to make two phone calls with her relatives,” it added.

Jonathan Harounoff, international spokesman for Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York, told JNS that “for all the excitement about the Islamic Republic moderating with its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, the regime is still supremely uninterested in engaging with the West, in having a free and open media environment and in providing its own people with the freedoms and rights afforded to their counterparts elsewhere in the world.”

Harounoff, the author of the forthcoming book Unveiled, about the woman-led protest movement in Iran, told JNS that “this is the same regime that has exported a dangerous antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-American ideology that has upended the Middle East even since Iran-backed Hamas terrorists raped, butchered and kidnapped their way through southern Israel.”

“The kidnapping of Cecilia Sala is just the latest example of a brutal and cruel regime that shows little regard for human life,” he added.

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, wrote that “Tehran is trying to leverage more foreign hostages for concessions.”

“Until there are real costs imposed for this behavior, Iran has every incentive to continue,” he wrote.
Josef Lewkowicz, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, dies at 98
Josef Lewkowicz, a Holocaust survivor who became a world-acclaimed Nazi hunter, died on Dec. 26. He was 98 years old.

As a teenager, Lewkowicz was sent to the Płaszów camp outside Krakow in Nazi-occupied Poland at the beginning of World War II and the Holocaust. He would ultimately survive six camps in total while in captivity and was the sole survivor of his family.

After the end of the war, Lewkowicz worked with the U.S. military to track down and identify SS leaders who had disappeared.

His most notable case was bringing to justice his greatest tormentor, SS commandant Amon Goeth, the “Butcher of Płaszów.” Goeth, played by British actor Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film “Schindler’s List,” was known for excessive and random brutality, even for a Nazi.

“I recognized him right away,” he told “The Current,” a current affairs program affiliated with CBC Radio One, in 2023. “I saw that murderer’s face. I knew it very, very well.”

In addition to his work hunting down Nazi officers, Lewkowicz is credited with rescuing roughly 600 Jewish refugee children displaced during the war who were living in orphanages and monasteries throughout Poland.

In the years that followed, Lewkowicz acknowledged that he was reluctant to talk about his experiences of the Holocaust. Instead, he worked to help other survivors while rebuilding his own life.

He worked as a diamond dealer in South America, then married and raised a family in Montreal, where he became an active member of the Jewish community before moving to Jerusalem.

It was at the urging of his children that he began to share his story publicly.

In 2019, Lewkowicz was the subject of the documentary “The Survivor’s Revenge,” produced by JRoots, a charity with which he collaborated for many years.

Lewkowicz’s book, The Survivor, was published in the United Kingdom in March 2023 and has since been translated into 12 languages. It is slated to be released in the United States on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, 2025.
Concerns about Holocaust Memorial Day after calls for a boycott
The president of the Board of Deputies has expressed concerns for “the chilling effect” calls to boycott Holocaust Memorial Day could have on the annual event.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission sent a letter to 460 local councils and universities, urging them to boycott the event next month after the HMD Trust “refused to include Gaza among the genocides being marked”.

Speaking at Limmud, Board President Phil Rosenberg said: “Last year, there was an almost 20 per cent drop, and with calls for the boycott we are anxious about what is going to happen next month.”

Rosenberg, who sits on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said that he had been encouraged by the response of local councils, some of whom had added Holocaust Memorial Day resources in response to the calls to boycott.

In an article in the Jewish News, Councillor Jeremy Newmark, leader of Hertsmere Borough Council said that said he had found the request “appalling, objectionable and racist” and that it was a “thinly veiled attempt to redefine Holocaust Memorial Day as a vehicle to attack the state of Israel”.

Demands for a boycott had only served to motivate him to put more resources and energy into marking the day, he said.

Olivia Marks-Waldman told the JC: “The Holocaust is central to and has primacy on Holocaust Memorial Day. Learning about the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis, should resonate with everyone, regardless of faith or background. It’s beyond frustrating and disappointing that this is not recognised by the IHRC.”

She said that hundreds of thousands of people would be getting together on January 27 in communities around the UK to learn more about the Holocaust and also the non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. “Nationally and locally we will be learning the lessons from the past, and our team is working hard to make sure that, as usual, thousands of events mark Holocaust Memorial Day appropriately with its focus on the unique crime that was the Holocaust.”

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day will mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It will also mark 30 years since the genocide in Bosnia and remember victims of other genocides, including Rwanda and Darfur.
Grandson of former commandant of Auschwitz on rise of antisemitism, his life as a pastor
Kai Höss walks to the podium every Sunday at a small church in Germany to share a message of salvation and God’s grace and forgiveness.

He’s the lead pastor at the Bible Church of Stuttgart, a non-denominational church that serves the English-speaking international community as well as U.S. service members and their families who are stationed in the area.

He’s also the grandson of former Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss, a Nazi official who oversaw the mass murder of an estimated 1.1 million people, the majority of them Jews, at the notorious extermination camp in southern Poland.

Rudolf Hoss, right, the former Auschwitz commandant, with, from left, Richard Baer, commandant of Auschwitz and Dr. Josef Mengele, during a retreat outside the camp in 1944.

Höss spoke with Fox News Digital from his home in Germany to share his thoughts on antisemitism today and how he reconciles his Christian faith with what his grandfather did nearly 80 years ago.

He was raised in a non-Christian home with non-believing parents, but his Grandma Caroline was a believer who "understood Christ" and the Gospel.

"I thought she was really weird," Höss admitted.

He graduated from school, trained as a chef, joined the military and then studied hotel tourism management. He worked abroad for roughly 20 years, spending most of his time with big-name hotel chains like Sheraton and Shangri-La.

"I was a young urban professional full of myself, in love with myself, you know, Rolex, golden Amex, Mr. Cool, going to clubs, out every night. That was my life," he said.

It wasn’t until a medical operation went wrong that he turned his life around. He found a Bible in the hospital room, initially telling himself that he wasn’t going to read it, but continued book by book.

He was saved in Singapore in 1989. "God saved a wretch like me, you know? And that's what he does. And it never stops. His grace abounds," Höss said.


Ethiopian Israeli American legislator discusses cheap politics | EP 23 Mazi Pilip
Welcome to the 23st episode of "Here I Am with Shai Davidai," a podcast that delves into the rising tide of antisemitism through insightful discussions with top Jewish advocates.

Join host Shai Davidai in an inspiring conversation with Mazi Pilip, an Israeli American, Ethiopian Jew, and Nassau County legislator. In this episode, Mazi shares her incredible journey from a small village in Ethiopia to becoming a prominent figure in American politics.

Key Highlights:
Cultural Roots and Identity: Mazi reflects on her childhood in Ethiopia, the challenges of being a Jew in a predominantly non-Jewish environment, and the hope instilled by her grandmother about one day reaching Jerusalem.

Operation Solomon: Mazi recounts the miraculous airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel during a civil war, describing the emotional and physical journey as a 12-year-old girl.

Integration into Israeli Society: She discusses the cultural shock and the warm welcome she received in Israel, highlighting the support from the Israeli government in education and integration.

Military Service and Education: Mazi talks about her transformative experience in the Israeli Defense Forces and her academic achievements, which paved the way for her future endeavors.

Activism and Politics: From student activism to becoming the chairwoman of the National Ethiopian Student Organization, Mazi emphasizes the importance of involvement and leadership in effecting change.

Life in the United States: Mazi shares her experiences of building bridges between the U.S. and Israel, her involvement in local politics, and her journey to becoming a Nassau County legislator.

Challenges and Achievements: She candidly discusses the challenges of running for office while pregnant with twins and the impactful legislation she has championed, such as the "Unmask the Hate" bill.

Vision for the Future: Mazi expresses her commitment to serving her community, promoting unity, and fostering understanding among diverse groups.

This episode is a testament to Mazi Pilip's resilience, leadership, and dedication to making a difference. Her story is a powerful reminder of the impact one individual can have on their community and beyond.


Lighting Hanukkah candles, Mila Kunis reflects on her USSR-repressed Judaism
Mila Kunis lit a hanukkiah with Israel advocate Noa Tishby for the second night of Hanukkah.

Tishby, who is hosting celebrities for each night of Hanukkah this year, asked Kunis about some her family's traditions and cultural practices in a video posted to social media.

Kunis, who was born in Ukraine and moved to the US when she was eight, said that she didn't grow up with strong Jewish traditions.

"I never lit Hanukkah candles until I had kids," Kunis said. "I grew up doing nothing."

Kunis noted that because of her upbringing in the former Soviet Union, she was heavily discouraged from pursuing a religious side to her Judaism.

"I knew I was Jewish, but I was told to never talk about it. I think because I grew up in a country that didn't allow for religion," she said. "I was raised culturally Jewish, so for me, it's a culture. And as I had kids, and my kids very much identify with the religion aspect of it, I thought, 'Okay, I guess we'll do Shabbos, and we'll do the candles.'"

"There's so much beautiful tradition in it," Kunis continued.

Jewish motherhood and monoliths
When asked why she thought it was important to be Jewish and proud, Kunis noted that building her family with her husband, Ashton Kutcher, played a big role in her faith.

"For me, it happened when I met my husband," she said, adding that although Kutcher isn't Jewish, he helped her understand her religion more."The thing about being Jewish is it's like a choose-your-own-adventure, where you can pick and choose things about it that resonate with you. There is no right or wrong way to be Jewish."

"Jews are not a monolith," Tishby added, noting how diverse Jews can be. "There's a lot of different ethnicities, cultures, traditions, history."

The two women bonded over every Jewish mother's fear of having someone in their house go hungry.

"The worst thing that one of my kids can say to me is, 'I'm hungry.' Food fixes everything," Kunis noted.




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