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Friday, January 17, 2025

01/17 Links Pt2: ‘Back to Normal’ After the Gaza War?; Melanie Phillips: 10 Steps the West Must Take In Order to Survive; JVP is a shield for hate, not a voice for peace

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: ‘Back to Normal’ After the Gaza War?
If the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement really does herald the end of this war, then combined with the transfer of power in Washington, the political world will largely move on from its yearlong fixation with the Mideast. But we’ve learned some important things about American politics that should inform any attempt to go “back to normal.”

The Israel-Hamas war exposed, for example, the hypocrisy of the #MeToo movement. The more that evidence of Hamas’s use of mass rape and sexual torture mounted—including detailed and graphic admissions by Hamas terrorists who carried out these monstrous acts—the more progressive voices denied it.

We also learned the hard way that “speech is violence” contains some important caveats. The truth, we now know, is that as far as campus activists and Squad-affiliated members of Congress are concerned, Jewish speech is violence—and anti-Jewish violence is speech.

The struggle against racism is noble, which is why it must be continued without the participation of people who fill the streets chanting for the Houthis, a slave-driving and institutionally racist arm of Iranian expansionism, and without white kids from Brooklyn who scream “white imperialist” at a woman from Ethiopia because she wears a Star of David around her neck.

The fight for artistic freedom and freedom of speech will be an uphill battle. The publishing industry has gone to great lengths to suppress Jewish voices; the same is true of the music industry and Jewish performers. The banishing of Jewish authors from bookstores and films with Israeli characters won’t make it any easier, nor will the violent hounding of Jewish and Israeli speakers from campuses.

Speaking of which, reclaiming academic freedom might be the longest of the long shots, as loyalty oaths have come roaring back in America’s institutions of higher learning. Nor does the anti-disinformation campaign have much hope, led as it is by those who post only disinformation and blood libels.

I could go on, but the point is made. Of all the hypocrisies facing the Jewish community post-ceasefire, however, surely none stings more than the one regarding the concept of ceasefires itself.
House Republicans urge Trump to immediately nominate an Abraham Accords ambassador
A group of 47 House Republicans led by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) urged President-elect Donald Trump to immediately nominate an ambassador-rank special envoy for the Abraham Accords, a position that has been left empty since it was created by Congress in late 2023.

Lawler and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) introduced legislation in 2023 to create a new ambassador-level position for the Abraham Accords, Negev Forum and Middle East regional normalization, which was incorporated into and passed into law through the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2023.

But the position was left empty as normalization efforts became a secondary priority in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

In a letter to Trump on Thursday, the lawmakers said that they’re confident Trump will “prioritize” expanding normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab world in his second administration, and said that having a dedicated official leading those efforts would be “key to a cohesive, effective, and long-lasting normalization effort.”

The lawmakers said that the Biden administration’s failure to fill the slot — in spite of bipartisan pressure to do so — showed “clear indifference to the Abraham Accords,” which they described as “incomprehensible, bad policy, and after the NDAA’s passage in 2023, unlawful.”

“In light of President Biden’s shortcomings, we urge you to make this nomination an immediate priority,” the lawmakers continued. “We know expanding the Abraham Accords remains a key priority for your Administration and having a Presidential Envoy will be a key player in spearheading these efforts. We look forward to working with both you and the Presidential Envoy in the future to strengthen Israel’s role in the Middle East and reach long-lasting stability in the region.”
Ilya Shapiro’s new book ‘Lawless’ calls out dysfunction in higher education
Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro had a personal run-in with cancel culture in 2022, when a tweet he later admitted was poorly worded sparked an online uproar and allegations of racism, leading to an official investigation by Georgetown University Law Center, where he had been hired to lead the university’s Center for the Constitution.

Months later, the university closed its investigation and cleared Shapiro’s name. But too much damage had been done, Shapiro said, and he resigned just days after formally taking the helm of the center.

Now, three years after he posted the ill-fated tweet that criticized President Joe Biden for promising to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Shapiro has many more allies in his criticism of the “illiberal takeover” of higher education and legal education in particular, a problem he describes in his new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elite.

The aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel and the rise in antisemitism that followed at many top American universities proved to be a tipping point, Shapiro argued.

“It raised the issue of the dysfunction and pathologies in our institutions of higher education to a national level,” Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Thursday.

Shapiro, whose career has been spent in libertarian and conservative institutions, asserts that his critique of legal education today is not about the fact that most law school faculty at the nation’s top universities lean to the left politically. In other words, he insists that his concerns are not just the grievances of someone whose views place him firmly in the minority in the legal sphere.

“I want to emphasize that this is not the decades-long complaint that conservatives have with the hippie takeover of the faculty lounge, if you will,” said Shapiro.

Instead, Shapiro is sounding the alarm about what he fears is the corrupting of the legal profession, a field that is crucial to so many facets of American life, by a culture of silence and groupthink.


Melanie Phillips: 10 Steps the West Must Take In Order to Survive | Think Twice
What does the current antisemitism raging in the West say about Western civilization? JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin sits down with columnist and author Melanie Phillips to discuss her newest book, The Founder’s Stone, which takes a deep dive into this issue.

Phillips and Tobin unpack the political and spiritual crisis occurring and the ten steps that the civilized world must implement to survive.

Chapters
00:00 The New Divisions in Society
01:09 The Reaction to October 7th Attacks
05:01 Understanding the Roots of Western Decline
10:43 The Spiritual Crisis of the West
20:41 Israel's Struggle as a Civilizational Battle
30:21 The Importance of Nation-States and Identity
35:02 The Hostility of Universalism Towards Israel
36:28 Liberalism's Vulnerability and Internal Conflicts
41:51 The Role of Religion in Western Civilization
45:45 Mass Immigration and Shared Values in Society
50:27 The Grooming Gangs Scandal and Institutional Failures
58:23 Reviving the West: Jewish Values and Cultural Survival


Amnesty International event in Venice sparks outrage over Gaza report
Venice has become the center of a heated debate following Amnesty International’s recent event aimed at presenting its findings on alleged genocide in Gaza. The controversy erupted over the event’s original title, “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: The Genocide of Israel Against the Palestinian People in Gaza,” which some deemed inflammatory. This sparked venue changes and a broader discussion on freedom of expression versus cultural sensitivity.

Amnesty International had planned the event for January 9, 2025, at the Venetian Athenaeum to present its report on the situation in Gaza over the past 15 months. However, the use of the term “genocide” provoked immediate backlash from the local Jewish community, which argued that it was provocative and trivialized their historical experiences.

“This whole situation reminded me of Germany in 1933. We live in an historical moment in which hatred toward Jews is growing stronger than ever. Not only did Jews face the Shoah [Holocaust] in the past, but worldwide they are still contested,” explained Paolo Navarro Dina, vice president of the Jewish Community of Venice, to The Media Line.

“The flyer Amnesty distributed mentioned the word ‘genocide,’ which trivializes our history. So, as the Jewish community, we asked the Venetian Athenaeum to opt for a different term, without opposing the event per se,” he added.

For Amnesty, however, the title reflected the gravity of its findings.

“After nine months of investigation, we concluded that Israel committed 13 acts of genocide, as defined by the 1948 Convention,” said Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty Italy. “This was not a term we used lightly”, he added.

The Venetian Athenaeum ultimately withdrew its support for the event, citing concerns over “public order.”

“We criticized the mention of genocide, but we had no intention of censoring or canceling the event. This was the Athenaeum’s decision, not ours, but the way it was handled suggested otherwise,” Navarro Dina explained.
JVP is a shield for hate, not a voice for peace
For instance, JVP has collaborated with Samidoun, a group sanctioned by the US and Canada for funding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization. Samidoun has celebrated horrific acts of terror, including Hamas’ massacre, torture, rape, and kidnapping of civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023. JVP hosted events featuring Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted for her role in a PFLP bombing that killed two Jewish students in a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969. The organization also promoted Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist involved in multiple airplane hijackings, including one that almost resulted in the mass murder of 148 civilians.

The report identifies past JVP Facebook page managers having lived in Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, including a communications director who worked in Beirut for 17 years. JVP’s funding is also concerning. It has received financial support from billionaire-led foundations and other funders linked to Lebanon and Iran. Considering that Hezbollah officials have openly admitted to “investing in” and coordinating with anti-Israel groups in the West and JVP’s support for terrorist organizations, its connections to Lebanon should warrant closer scrutiny.

Despite its Jewish brand, JVP’s deceptive rhetoric has crossed the line into antisemitism. For example, its “Deadly Exchange” campaign falsely blames Israel and Jewish groups for cases of police brutality against people of color in America. As it promotes misinformation about exchanges that focus on emergency response and counterterrorism, JVP ignores similar exchanges between law enforcement in the US and other nations. This echoes deadly antisemitic propaganda, which for centuries has fueled violence against Jews by scapegoating them for evils in different societies. Figures like Louis Farrakhan and Linda Sarsour have adopted and amplified these claims, demonstrating how JVP legitimizes and spreads hate.

JVP claims to represent Jewish values, but its actions suggest otherwise. The organization distorts Jewish rituals and holidays, such as Passover and Hanukkah, to promote anti-Israel campaigns and agendas. When anti-Israel extremists cross the line into bigotry against Jews, as they often have since October 7, JVP’s Jewish brand is used to create confusion. The organization acts as a shield for hate and a tool for its allies to engage in tokenism - dismissing concerns about antisemitism by pointing to a small minority of Jews who support their cause.

By aligning with extremist groups, promoting inflammatory rhetoric, and rejecting Israel’s existence, JVP does not advance dialogue or mutual understanding. Instead, it exacerbates tensions and perpetuates conflict at the expense of Israelis and Palestinians alike. The detailed StandWithUs report sheds critical light on these issues, making it clear that JVP’s agenda does not align with the values of justice, coexistence, or peace.

For those committed to peace and coexistence, it is essential to examine JVP’s agenda critically. JVP is not merely “critical” of Israel but works with the most extreme anti-Israel activists to spread ill will in the hopes of eliminating the world’s only Jewish state. True progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will come not from extremism, division, or campaigns of hate, but from efforts rooted in respect, dialogue, and a shared commitment to justice for all.
Although International Law Has Its Place, It Can’t Prevent the Horrors of History from Repeating
One of the lessons of the war that now might be coming to an end—if it were not already clear—is the extent to which international law and its institutions can be wielded as weapons against Israel. Aharon Friedman analyzes the deluded thinking that has created this situation:
International law helps set parameters and settle disputes between lawful countries committed to following the law. [But] World War II and the Holocaust were the result of geostrategic power balances, hatred, tyranny, and appeasement, not inadequacies of international law. . . . International law did not prevent Iran’s proxies from invading Israel on October 7 or Putin from invading Ukraine, and it does not result in “human rights for every person.”

Moreover, Friedman writes, Israel’s efforts to protect itself from the International Criminal Court (ICC) by expanding the power of its judiciary has itself caused problems:
The ICC ignores its own complementarity requirement, the rule that it must defer to countries whose own justice systems are addressing military misconduct. Israel has an extremely strong such system. . . . Led by Aharon Barak, Israel’s judiciary and legal bureaucracy have seized enormous power from elected governments in what Barak himself has described as a “constitutional revolution.” Attempts even partially to restore the authority of elected officials are met with arguments as to how this would cause Israel to fail ICC complementarity.
Ugandan judge who backed Israel in genocide case said set to become ICJ chief
Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda is set to be appointed president of the International Court of Justice, according to media reports, after Lebanese President Joseph Aoun earlier this week summoned Nawaf Salam to designate him prime minister.

An ICJ statement released on Tuesday announcing Salam’s resignation did not mention Sebutinde, but as the court’s current vice president, she is expected to be promoted to the top spot.

Justice Salam began his role as ICJ president in February 2024 and has served as a judge on the court since 2018.

In his first speech as premier earlier in the week, Salam, referring to Israel, whose cases he until recently oversaw, said he would work to “impose the complete withdrawal of the enemy from the last occupied inch of our land.”

Sebutinde, on the other hand, was the only judge on the 17-member ICJ panel to vote against all six measures adopted by the court last year in a ruling ordering Israel to take action to prevent potential acts of genocide as it fought Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

She was also one of only two judges to oppose the court’s assertion that Palestinians’ claims of war crimes in Gaza may fall under the scope of the Genocide Convention. The other was Israeli Justice Aharon Barak. (Contrary to some reports at the time, the court did not rule it was plausible that genocide was taking place.)

Judge Sebutinde, in her dissent, argued that “South Africa has not demonstrated, even on a prima facie basis, that the acts allegedly committed by Israel and of which the Applicant complains, were committed with the necessary genocidal intent, and that as a result, they are capable of falling within the scope of the Genocide Convention.”

She added that “the Applicant has not demonstrated that the rights it asserts and for which it seeks protection through the indication of provisional measures are plausible under the Genocide Convention.”

Sebutinde said the failure of states to reach a political solution to conflicts “may sometimes lead them to resort to a pretextual invocation of treaties like the Genocide Convention, in a desperate bid to force a case into the context of such a treaty, in order to foster its judicial settlement… In my view, the present case falls in this category.”
ICC prosecutor sees 'no real effort' by Israel to probe alleged Gaza war crimes
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has defended his decision to bring war crimes allegations against Israel's prime minister, saying Israel had made "no real effort" to investigate the allegations itself.

In an interview with Reuters, he stood by his decision over the arrest warrant despite a vote last week by the US House of Representatives to sanction the ICC in protest, a move he described as "unwanted and unwelcome."

ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.

The Israeli prime minister's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Khan's remarks to Reuters.

Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes. The United States, Israel's main ally, is also not a member of the ICC, and Washington has criticized the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

"We're here as a court of last resort and ...as we speak right now, we haven't seen any real effort by the State of Israel to take action that would meet the established jurisprudence, which is investigations regarding the same suspects for the same conduct," Khan told Reuters.

"That can change, and I hope it does," he said in Thursday's interview, a day after Israel and the terror group Hamas reached a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza.


US government agrees to confer ‘minority’ status on Jewish-owned businesses
Jews make up about 2.4% of the American population, per some estimates. A new memorandum of understanding ensures that the U.S. Commerce Department will consider entities owned by Jews to be “minority business enterprises.”

“We’re going to be able to benefit from billions of dollars of these programs, contracts, some loans, grants, the hundreds of different programs that every single Jewish business is going to benefit from,” Duvi Honig, founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, told JNS.

“This is something that impacts everyone—every single business in the Jewish world, in all 50 states,” Honig said. “We are officially a partner with the United States Department of Commerce and the government.”

The Orthodox chamber and the Minority Business Development Agency, which is part of the Commerce Department, signed the agreement on Monday in Washington during a ceremony attended by Don Graves, the outgoing deputy commerce secretary, and by Jewish business owners and leaders and politicians.

Graves said that the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce’s work is “so important,” because “if you have a hope, if you have a dream, if you have an idea and you’re willing to work hard, we should give you the opportunity to turn that into something special.”
Penn Professor's Fight for Free Speech Heads to Federal Court
Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who was sanctioned for her controversial remarks about racial issues, sued the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday for breach of contract and race discrimination, putting a dispute over tenure and academic freedom that has dragged on for almost three years into the hands of a federal court. The complaint comes after Wax was suspended for a year at half-pay and stripped of her named chair, penalties the lawsuit says are "illegal multiple times over."

"The imposition of academic discipline violates the University's contractual promise to Professor Wax to abide by the principles of the First Amendment," the lawsuit reads. And "the University's Speech Policy, which is the basis of that discipline, unlawfully discriminates based on the race … of both speakers and targets of speech."

The complaint advances a novel legal theory that could have major implications for universities as they brace for the incoming Trump administration. Wax argues that Penn engaged in race discrimination by punishing speech that offended racial minorities but not speech that offended Jews, citing a litany of cases in which the school declined to discipline professors who deployed anti-Semitic tropes and called for the destruction of Israel.

"Penn tolerated speech targeting Jews while punishing Professor Wax for speech about affirmative action and other racial topics," the lawsuit reads. "Race therefore was a but-for cause"—that is, a key motivation—"of the decision to discipline Plaintiff Wax."

If that argument is accepted by Pennsylvania's Eastern District court, it could become a roadmap for plaintiffs and government agencies seeking to challenge the double standards that emerged on campus after the October 7 attacks, when schools that had spent years policing microaggressions turned on a dime to defend the free speech rights of anti-Israel protesters, some of whom flew terrorist flags and used anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The hypocrisy was particularly glaring at Penn, whose former president Liz Magill resigned after she said at a congressional hearing that calls for the genocide of Jews do not necessarily constitute harassment. To illustrate the double standard, the complaint includes a table comparing Wax's speech with that of a fellow Penn faculty member, Dwayne Booth, who published a cartoon depicting Zionists drinking the blood of Gazans.


Pro-Hezbollah teacher in London vows to make children holy warriors
A pro-Hezbollah teacher at an Islamic school located minutes from a London synagogue has vowed to make children holy warriors, the JC can reveal.

Photos obtained by this newspaper show schoolgirls at Jaaferiya school in Tooting wearing green bandanas and a boy wearing a T-shirt that reads: “I don’t see death as anything but bliss.”

The school’s walls can be seen plastered with images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s brutal Supreme Leader notorious for operating terror proxies across the Middle East, human rights violations and seeking the destruction of Israel.

In a Facebook post on October 7, a trustee and teacher at Jaaferiya school, Aun Ali Naqvi, shared an emoji of a Palestinian flag and said the day marked “happiness”.

A day later he wrote in a chilling post: “We will make our children soldiers of Imam (Aaj)” – a 9th-century figure whom Shia Muslims believe will reappear one day to wage an apocalyptic war against non-Muslims and rid the world of evil.

In another post on the day Israel attacked a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, Naqvi appeared to suggest that children should take up arms, saying: “When the lion among us is killed, the children recognise the enemy and seek revenge.”

Naqvi, who has claimed children in the UK are “brainwashed” by immoral Western values, also shared an image memorialising Hezbollah terror chief Ibrahim Akil as “martyr”, captioning a photo of him “martyr commander of H/e/z/b/o/l/l/a/h”.

The charity that runs the school and its mosque, Idara-e-Jaaferiya, is already under investigation by the Charity Commission and the JC’s evidence has been added to the probe, a spokesman said.
UMD medical school stands by Israeli surgeon after CAIR played role canceling his talk
The University of Maryland School of Medicine is pledging to stand by a renowned Israeli trauma surgeon whose scheduled lecture to the school’s department of surgery was canceled this week due to unspecified security threats.

Dr. Elon Glassberg, who until last summer served as the surgeon general of the Israel Defense Forces, was slated to give a talk about saving lives on the battlefield.

“The School of Medicine has invited Dr. Glassberg to speak at a future date while working to ensure a safe learning atmosphere for our surgical teams,” Deborah Kotz, a spokesperson for the medical school, told Jewish Insider on Friday. “We are committed to hearing all voices when it comes to saving lives.”

Kotz declined to say if the lecture had been rescheduled for a particular date.

“We were obviously troubled when we first heard that the speaker wasn’t going to be moving forward,” said Howard Libit, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council. “My understanding is they are already working to schedule a new date and to ensure there’s proper security for that, and I understand and respect their decision.”

Glassberg’s planned Jan. 16 lecture was canceled two days beforehand amid a pressure campaign spearheaded by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who claimed victory over canceling the talk. CAIR said that its supporters had sent more than 6,000 emails to the medical school.

“This swift community response demonstrates the power of collective action to uphold justice and accountability,” Zainab Chaudry, CAIR’s Maryland director, said in a statement. “We commend UMSOM for listening to their students and campus community and retracting this invitation.”

But the security threats were “legitimate,” according to Libit, and unable to be dealt with in just a matter of days.


IDF: Ashkelon-Sderot train line, closed since October 7, is safe to reopen next month
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that the Ashkelon-Sderot train line was safe to reopen on February 1, nearly two years after the vital route was scrapped amid persistent rocket fire from Gaza.

The announcement came hours after the Prime Minister’s Office announced overnight that Israel had agreed to a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

The military said the decision was reached following a fresh assessment, and after the train line had been beefed up against rocket fire.

“The IDF considers the train a vital, strategic national infrastructure, and a central part of the western Negev’s rehabilitation,” it said. “Therefore, no expense has been spared to allow its return in the best and most secure fashion.”

The IDF said it had prepared for the Sderot-Ashkelon line to reopen by deploying new technologies, physical defenses and surveillance capacities around it.

The military added that it had carried out other activities in northern Gaza and the border region to remove threats to the train line. Earlier this month, the army said it had destroyed a Hamas compound in north Gaza’s Beit Hanoun that was considered a threat to the train.

The Sderot train station was shuttered in May 2023 due to security concerns, and its reopening was delayed after it sustained rocket damage during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 onslaught.


10 charged over Beirut port blast as probe resumes after Hezbollah accusations of bias
Lebanese judge Tarek Bitar resumed his investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port blast on Thursday, charging 10 people including security, customs, and military personnel, a judicial official said.

The fresh charges come after a two-year hiatus in the investigation into the August 4, 2020 explosion that killed more than 220 people, injured thousands, and devastated swathes of Lebanon’s capital.

Authorities said the explosion was triggered by a fire in a warehouse where a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate fertilizer had been haphazardly stored for years.

But nobody has been held responsible for the blast, one of history’s largest non-nuclear explosions.

The probe stalled two years ago after Lebanese terror group Hezbollah had accused Bitar of bias and demanded his dismissal, and after officials named in the investigation had filed a flurry of lawsuits to prevent it from going forward.

The resumption comes with Hezbollah’s influence weakened after its recent war with Israel.


Keir Starmer visits Auschwitz admitting, ‘Nothing could have prepared me’
Keir Starmer has admitted nothing could prepare him for the “sheer horror” of what he saw inside Auschwitz-Birkenau, after visiting the Nazi concentration camp last Friday with wife Victoria.

The Prime Minister said he felt “a sickness, an air of desperation” as he stood on the infamous train tracks at the Birkenau memorial site and attempted to comprehend the slaughter of one million people “simply because they were Jewish.”

He said the visit had made him recognise “more clearly than ever before” that the horrors of the Holocaust were not just the responsibility of “a few bad individuals” but were actually the result of “a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary people.”

In a visit, that coincided with a meeting with the Polish Prime Minister in Warsaw, and took place ahead of commemorations for Holocaust Memorial Day, 80 years after the Shoah, Starmer also noted that “despicably” in the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas terror attack with rising antisemitism, the community had been “targeted once again for the same reason, because they are Jewish.”

The PM pledged:”The truth that I have seen here today will stay with me for the rest of my life.

“So too, will my determination to defend that truth, to fight the poison of antisemitism and hatred in all its forms, and to do everything I can to make ‘never again’ mean what it says, and what it must truly mean: never again.”

After touring the most infamous German concentration camp the PM added: “Nothing could prepare me for the sheer horror of what I have seen in this place. It is utterly harrowing. The mounds of hair, the shoes, the suitcases, the names and details, everything that was so meticulously kept, except for human life.

“As I stood by the train tracks at Birkenau, looking across that cold, vast expanse, I felt a sickness, an air of desolation, as I tried to comprehend the enormity of this barbarous, planned, industrialised murder: a million people killed here for one reason, simply because they were Jewish.

“My visit today has also shown me more clearly than ever before, how this was not the evil deeds of a few bad individuals. It took a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary people who each played their part in constructing this whole industry of death.

“To build the tracks, drive the trains, extract the hair and teeth, conceive the method of mass murder – each stomach-churning step rooted in the hatred of difference. The lessons of this darkest of crimes are the ultimate warning to humanity of where prejudice can lead.”


What can we learn from the case of Dutch Jews?
For years, the core Dutch Jewish population was estimated by demographers to be at around 30,000 and slowly declining. By ‘core Jewish population’, we mean Jews who would readily and unambiguously self-identify as Jews when asked, for example, in a census or survey. Parenthetically, research also tells us that this definition is close to the halachic one (i.e. a Jew is someone who was born to a Jewish mother or who converted according to Jewish law).

There were good reasons to think the Dutch Jewish population was declining. It is ageing and has low fertility rates, much like Dutch society as a whole, only a little more so. In fact, Jews across the Diaspora led the way in the historical decline in fertility, and the result is clearly felt: most Jewish communities, including the Dutch one, cannot grow on their own. The number of deaths happening in them is larger than the number of births, and it is as simple as that.

Yet our recent research into the Jewish population of the Netherlands has shown that what is true in theory does not have to be so in practice. Researching the community can reveal that what local leaders and policymakers sometimes assume to be absolute truth may not tell the real story.

What have we learned about Jews in the Netherlands?
First, by using demographic research methods, we found out that the Dutch Jewish population amounts to 35,000 people, not 30,000. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the population is numerically stable at the very least, and probably even slowly growing. Third, like all Jewish communities, the Dutch one includes many people who might not self-identify as Jews but are connected to them, e.g. people with Jewish heritage and non-Jewish family members. Taken together in the Netherlands, they comprise 65,000-70,000 Dutch people.

But let us come back to the ‘core’ Jews: 35,000 and not 30,000. Is it such a big deal? Well, yes, it is. Because when the population is growing, its infrastructure also has to grow. Ask a school principal if growth is a big deal for them, and you would probably receive a fiery reply: ‘Of course! We need more classrooms and a larger budget!’ Establishing a fact of growth and ascertaining the true size of a population are not exercises that simply satisfy the over-indulgent analytical mind. They are of real pragmatic value and can be easily translated into the scale and quality of services.

What growth means to the narrative of Diaspora Jews
Demographers of Jewish populations have long popularised the narrative of the ‘vanishing Diaspora’ or ‘vanishing Jewish Europe’. They had their reasons to do so, all legitimate. It is a fact that since the 1960s, the Jewish population of Europe has declined dramatically from 3.2 million to 1.3 million people. A very significant part of this drop was prompted by the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent mass migration of Soviet and Eastern European Jews into Israel.

Jewish migration from Russia and Ukraine is continuing today, fuelled by the latest hostilities there and the unfolding geopolitical reshuffle. French Jews are migrating from France, too, for a different reason but with the same effect: the French Jewish population is also in decline. The German Jewish population is not migrating but is ageing rapidly, another process possibly resulting in decline. Still, while the overall decline is real, it is not universal and needs to be researched and qualified.
Israeli Firefighters Arrive to Help California in Palisades Fire
A team of Israeli firefighters arrived Thursday in Southern California to assist local firefighters in fighting the Palisades Fire, as well as to share insights and learn from the state’s experience in battling the blaze.

The delegation was organized by the Emergency Volunteers Project, in coordination with the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles and in partnership with El Al Airlines, the national carrier of the State of Israel. Participants included wildfire expert Shay Levy, and other experts from a variety of fields, including an expert in hydraulics and an officer from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who specializes in the use of artificial intelligence for search and rescue.

The delegation landed and immediately proceeded to the fire zone, where they drove through Pacific Palisades to study the damage caused by the devastating fire. On Friday morning, they met California firefighters, including from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire), to share information and firsthand experiences.

The team was eager to jump into hotspots and assist in fighting active fires, though most of the fires within the area have been contained. Crews from all over California are moving through Palisades, checking for lingering hotspots and hosing down cars and property that might still ignite in Santa Ana winds that are expected to return next week.

Local firefighters showed the Israeli team their various operations, including a specialized team for monitoring drone flight within the fire area. (A drone collided with one of the two large Canadian tanker plans, forcing it out of action for days.) In return, the Israelis shared their own experiences, such as dealing with a sudden lack of water pressure (a common problem in the Palisades fire). Many also had questions about the Palisades Fire, such as why the reservoir atop Palisades was empty, and whether there had been adequate uses of firebreaks to prevent the fire from spreading.




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