Wednesday, February 05, 2025

02/05 Links Pt2: Benny Morris: Response to Coates "The Message"; The other barbarians; Hamas is about pure bloodshed, not resisting oppression

From Ian:

Benny Morris: Response to Coates "The Message" is more propaganda than history
Coates never explicitly propounds Arafat’s message because he knows that Western scholarship, based on myriad archaeological findings and documentary evidence, buttresses the traditional take that, indeed, the Jews lived in and resided in the Land of Israel\Palestine between say 1200 BC and the 7th century AD. As to the Temple Mount, he fails to mention that archaeologists, Israeli and foreign, have never been allowed to dig beneath the Temple Mount esplanade, where they might find traces of Solomon’s First Temple and certainly would find remnants of the Herodian reconstruction of the Second Temple.

“What I was seeing here seemed about as credible as the history behind those Confederate memorials [in Columbia, South Carolina],” he writes confusingly, conflating ancient Jewish history and the story of the Confederate South.

Coates goes one further in this conflation. Indeed, he exploits his description of his tour of the City of David to vent his anti-Americanism, killing, as it were, two birds with one stone. He tells us of a plaque at the site bearing an American flag and the name of a formed US ambassador to Israel. The plaque reads: “The City of David brings Biblical Jerusalem to life at the very place where the kings and the prophets of the Bible walked. The spiritual bedrock of our values as a nation comes from Jerusalem. It is upon these ideals that the American republic was founded, and the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel was formed.” And Alon Arad adds his two bits: “When you talk about white supremacy … this is why I think that the Evangelical church and the settlers [in the West Bank] found each other as a perfect match… Their mindset is the same.”

For Coates, “the settlers” are Israel – though most Israelis would dispute this - as the Evangelicals are America – though many, perhaps most, Americans would similarly contest this. It is perhaps worth recalling that the Afro-American campaign to achieve equal rights during the 1960s and 1970s would probably have gotten nowhere had it not been for massive support by northern whites, and some southern whites, including President Lyndon Johnson.

Near the end of the essay on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Coates unsurprisingly relates the story of Deir Yassin. But he doesn’t play it completely straight. He tells us that the assault on that Palestinian village, just west of West Jerusalem on 9 April 1948, almost midway in the 1948 War, “was led by the Irgun and …. [the] Lehi,” two dissident Jewish groups. The implication of the “led” is, perhaps, that the main Jewish militia, the Haganah, also participated. In fact, the assault was carried out by 130 Irgun (IZL) and Lehi troopers; the Haganah supplied only one or two squads in the middle of the battle, and they played only an insignificant role – they ferried in ammunition and extricated Irgun and Lehi wounded. Secondly, at Deir Yassin there was a battle: Four of the dissident troopers were killed and a dozen or more were wounded. About 100 Arabs died in or just after the battle, most of them civilians; some of these, according to Haganah intelligence reports, were executed. (In his retelling, Coates adds that the Lehi defined the Jews as a “master race” and the Arabs as a “slave race.” I am not familiar with these quotes and they do not express mainstream Lehi ideology. The Lehi, curiously, was composed of right-wing breakaways from the Irgun and left-wing anti-imperialists.

But Coates’s ropes in Deir Yassin for an ulterior purpose. The ruins of Deir Yassin, he points out, are “just a short drive from Yad Vashem [Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust]. The proximity of the two sites staggered me.” Coates’s message is clear: How could the Jews, who suffered six million dead at the hands of the Nazis, massacre Arabs? And he comments: “I knew that some Zionists invoked the Holocaust to justify their repression of the Palestinians” – and “a memorial to genocide was built within walking distance of a massacre that had made that memorial possible.” Implicit here is the absurd equation favored by Arab propagandists: Holocaust=Nakba. But in the Holocaust, the German state, for no reasonable reason, simply murdered six million unarmed Jews; in the second, Israel and the Palestinians fought a war over territory they both claimed and the Israeli militias won and crushed Palestinian society (and, along the way, here and there massacred Arabs as here and there during that war Arabs massacres Jews). The uninformed reader, as most of Coates’s American readers are, will, of course, be seduced into accepting the equation.

But I learned two things from “The Message.” One, surprisingly, was about Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s prophet and, in effect, founder. Coates quotes a long passage (which I had never encountered) in which Herzl bemoaned the “disaster” of Africa, “which remains unresolved to this day, and whose profound tragedy only a Jew can comprehend. This is the African question. Just call to mind all those terrible episodes of the slave trade, of human beings who, merely because they were black, were stolen like cattle, taken prisoner, captured and sold … Once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews … I wish also to assist in the redemption of the Africans.”

The second, and I was previously unfamiliar with Coates’s writings, was his way with words. His homily is emblazoned with catchy phrases. But the end result is a curse. Shakespeare’s Caliban had it right. There, in the “Tempest,” the colonized African tells us he learnt language from his oppressors, the white Anglos, but all that he could do with it was to curse.
Why the Accusation of Settler Colonialism Is So Hollow
Indeed, as the American literary and cultural critic Adam Kirsch points out in his On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, a book published last August, no small amount of anti-Americanism lies behind the campus’s anti-Zionism: just as American support for Israel feeds anger at America, so anti-American attitudes feed anger at Israel, whose history is perceived to be like that which led to the near extermination of North America’s pre-Columbian peoples. No longer able to fight a real genocide that took place in the past, Israel’s violent critics can feel virtuous by fighting an imaginary one thought to be taking place in the present. “For many academics and activists,” Kirsch writes, “describing Israel as a settler-colonial state was a sufficient justification for the Hamas attack.”

Kirsch’s response to this is to maintain that Zionism was not settler colonialist, and in this he reflects the thinking of most defenders of Israel, who, whatever their criticisms of some of its actions may be, find the extreme charges made against it outrageous. Their arguments are many. The Jews, it is claimed, are as indigenous to Palestine as are its Arabs; Jewish settlers in Palestine never intended to replace its Arab population; every inch of Arab land acquired by them in Zionism’s formative stage, from 1882 to Israel’s establishment in 1948, was legally purchased from its owners; it was the Arabs who sought to eliminate Palestine’s Jews by starting the 1948 war, not the other way around; it is absurd to label as “colonists” the millions of Jews who settled in Israel as refugees from European anti-Semitism, from the Holocaust, from persecution in Arab lands, and from repression in the Soviet Union, etc. How can one compare an Israeli Jew to a French colon, a Boer farmer, or an American frontiersman?

Yet as true as these arguments may be, they miss the mark. It’s not only that they’re not inconsistent with Fayez Sayegh’s description of Zionism. It’s also that, from its inception, Zionism itself thought it was a colonizing movement and spoke of itself in such terms. The first Zionist farming settlements created in the 1880s and 90s called themselves “colonies” (kolonyot or moshavot in Hebrew) and their inhabitants were routinely referred to as “colonists.” When Baron Edmond de Rothschild took most of these settlements under his wing, they became known as moshavot ha-baron, “the baron’s colonies,” and when he eventually ceded control over them, the organization he ceded it to was the Jewish Colonization Association. Herzl, who was critical of Rothschild’s efforts, said of them in an address to the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901, “Philanthropic colonization is a failure,” and then added, referring to his own plan, “National colonization will succeed.” Two years earlier, in addressing the Third Congress, he had said of the charter for Jewish settlement in Palestine that he hoped to obtain from the Turks: “Only when we shall be in possession of this charter, can we begin practical colonization on a large scale.”

Though Herzl’s plans fell through, Fayez Sayegh was right. Zionism was settler colonialism par excellence. It’s not wrong to think that it was. What is wrong is thinking that the type of colonialism that Sayegh ascribed to Zionism—that which has no “metropolitan home-base” but is “a home-base in its own right”—is automatically reprehensible.

Even more, it is wrong to think that such settler colonialism is a modern phenomenon when, on the contrary, it is one of the oldest in human history. It was such settler colonialism that brought the first homo sapiens out of Africa to Europe, where they gradually replaced the Neanderthals. It was such settler colonialism that led the speakers of proto-Indo-European, from which nearly all the languages of Europe and many of those of West Asia descend, to leave their ancient homeland north of the Black Sea and spread southward, eastward, and westward. It was such settler colonialism when the Aryans invaded India and created a Hindu civilization there; when the ancient Greeks founded their colonies all over the Mediterranean; when the Phoenicians built Carthage and the Arabs brought Islam to the Middle East and North Africa. Such and many similar developments took place over the ages because groups of people set out for new homes, sometimes killing those who lived there, sometime driving them out, sometimes conquering and dominating them, sometimes peacefully mingling with them and assimilating them.

As Wolfe accurately observed, a settler colonialist is not an emigrant. The emigrant leaves home in order to join a society and culture not his own and become part of it. The settler colonialist takes his society and culture with him and implants it in a new environment. Zionism’s message to the Jewish people was, “Let us stop being emigrants to the countries of the world and start being colonists in our own land!” That’s nothing to be ashamed of and we have already lost the intellectual battle when we think that it is. The question is not whether Zionism was settler colonialism; it’s what sort of settler colonialism it was. That’s what needs to be discussed and that’s where we need to take our stand.
The other barbarians
After the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe how ordinary people can commit evil acts by “just following orders.” Her thesis was that evil can become banal when it’s systematic and unthinking—when ordinary people participate in it without care or choice.

Arendt was admonished for her book, and in my opinion, rightly so. One just has to look at the photos of well-dressed Germans savagely and gleefully beating Jews in the streets or the films shot by British and American soldiers upon liberating the camps to see the superficiality of her theory. The soldiers found corpses with eyes gouged out, bodies split open and remnants of barbaric experimentation. Even more telling, when soldiers took groups of “ordinary” Germans to see the camps for themselves, the expressions on their faces were often not of horror but of complacency.

Germans at the time considered themselves highly educated. But education doesn’t necessarily track with civilized behavior; Marxists also consider themselves highly educated. The fact is, the “good German” is a myth. The only good Germans were the ones who hid Jews and otherwise helped save Jews, not the ones “following orders.”

While this exhibition commemorates the worst genocide in history, it also helps to explain how contemporary “educated” leftists can refuse to understand what the word genocide means, even as they try to repeat it. And in Europe, there’s a good chance that the grandparents of today’s violent rioters were herding humans into gas chambers 80 years ago.

Some Germans took their own lives so they wouldn’t be forced to perform barbaric acts on innocents. Sadly, that’s one of the few civilized responses to evil. It’s a response we never hear about in the Islamic world. This set of enemies has been taught since birth to hate and kill Jews as they believe it’s religiously sanctioned.

Sophie Scholl, a student leader of the White Rose resistance group during the Holocaust, was also religiously motivated to do everything possible to alert the world to what the Nazis were doing. “Laws change,” she said. “Conscience doesn’t.”

Scholl faced the Nazi guillotine for telling the truth. She was only a few years older than Anne Frank. Anything that excuses barbarism in any of its forms merely mocks the righteousness of those who live their lives doing good deeds and bravely calling out evil. It’s not pleasant to think that gleeful savagery will no doubt return with every generation. But understanding this truth is the only way to move forward.


Trotskyist reverberations: antisemitism, Stalinism, liberalism (Preface to ‘Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays’)
This preface begins with a consideration of the common political heritage, in Trotskyism, of the editor and creator of Fathom, and the Academic Director and founder of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism; and more widely of some more of the people who have been key to constructing Jewish communal and democratic responses in Britain to 21st century antisemitism. Going beyond the spirit of ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ it is a marker of some of the positive aspects of that heritage. One of these is a stubborn refusal to release one’s political moorings from the constraints of the material, existing world, even if that world can confound one’s hopes and expectations. The temptation to float free can open the door to fantasy thinking and then totalitarian politics. So one lesson that was instilled in us was the necessity of doing, and not only of thinking and talking. If Trotskyism was the anti-totalitarian spirit of the Russian Revolution, it focuses us on the difficulties of holding the anti-totalitarianism and the radical socialism together, and it looks at the effects of letting one or the other of these principles slip. Perhaps it is the fact that Trotskyism addressed some of the key issues of its time head on, which explains why some of those who were educated in its culture have been important in the development of the key issues of our time; and not in any specific direction but in all possible directions. The ‘Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays’ edited by Alan Johnson is available here.

Projects
This volume is a testament to the Fathom project; to its energy, its clarity and its impact. Fathom is a forum for reality-based discourse about Israel and its conflicts with its neighbours; and for thinking about the antisemitism that associates itself with discourse about Israel.

In January 2001, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process collapsed, at least that process did, and for that period. The following September, antizionism, for which it is axiomatic that such a peace process could never succeed, reasserted itself in the global left and liberal imagination as the common sense view, at the Durban World Conference against Racism. A week later, planes slammed into the World Trade Centre in New York, into the Pentagon, and one was prevented by a heroic struggle from slamming into the White House. The Durban programme for ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ (BDS) against Israel, was taken up by academics in London, who agitated for an exclusion of Israelis from university campuses. The academic unions in Britain did not adopt a boycott of Israeli universities, but they did allow the boycotters to create a culture in which, by 2009, there were no Jews left in their decision-making structures who were willing and able to argue against antizionism, or the antisemitism that came with it, and which inspired it.

Fathom was created in 2011, in the wake of the University and College Union (UCU) defeat of the activists who were challenging its antisemitic culture and norms; and at a time when antisemitism was spreading from the academic union into the key activist layers of the whole labour movement. By 2015, The Labour Party had elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, a man steeped in a lifetime of antizionist politics. Fathom was well established by then and it was in a position to offer an intellectual and political lead to those who wanted to understand the Labour antisemitism storm, and to those who found themselves inside it. Fathom offered a space for the resistance to Labour antisemitism to think and to debate, to learn and to teach.

Alan Johnson’s own 30,000 word 2019 Fathom report, Institutionally Antisemitic: Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party, went through 130 examples of Labour antisemitism, giving evidence that they happened, and offering clear explanations of why they were antisemitic.[1] It was cited in the damning 2020 report of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into antisemitism in the Labour Party. The EHRC report also made it clear that one of the key manifestations of the ‘unlawful harassment of Jews’, which had been common in Corbyn’s Labour Party, was the assumption of bad faith made against those who reported antisemitism. This was the assumption that people were pretending to think there was antisemitism but that they were ‘faking’ it or ‘smearing’ Corbyn and his faction in pursuance of an unstated underlying motive. The EHRC was re-describing the phenomenon that I had called ‘The Livingstone Formulation’ in the language of UK Equality law.[2] The EHRC drew on the evidence and the understanding that had been developed, nurtured and published by Alan Johnson in the Fathom project and by me through the Engage project.

His Fathom collection is one of the first books in a new book series, edited by myself and Rosa Freedman, Studies in Contemporary Antisemitism, which is a collaboration between Routledge and the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (LCSCA). This series is one element of an ambitious programme to establish a suite of platforms to publish academic research and debate on contemporary antisemitism. We are also nurturing the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA) as a high quality, peer reviewed, academic platform for publishing research. We are producing policy papers, journalism, blogs, social media and videos, which play important roles in disseminating academic research more widely. We are growing our network of antisemitism scholarship as an international community of research, of reading and writing, and of peer review.
The Free Press: Our “Holiday From History” Is Over | Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the most important historians alive today. His many books, like "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar," "The Romanovs," and "Catherine the Great & Potemkin" are essential to understanding power, politics, revolution, dictatorships, and above all, human nature.

While most of Sebag Montefiore’s books are biographies of people, Jerusalem is a biography of a city—one that is “the house of the one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions, and she is the only city to exist twice—in heaven and on earth.” The book takes you through 3,000 years of Jerusalem’s history, from King David to Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. It is a must-read. It has sold more than a million copies, and it has just been reissued in paperback.

With the ceasefire deal underway in Israel and with Donald Trump a few weeks into his second presidency, we could not think of a better person to talk to at this moment.


JPost Editorial: Hamas is about pure bloodshed, not resisting oppression
When Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel on October 7, their victims were not just Israelis. Among the over 250 hostages they dragged into Gaza were foreign workers who had come to Israel seeking better opportunities. These workers were laboring in Israel’s agriculture sector, supporting their families back home. They had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Hamas treated them no differently from anyone else.

The world rightly focused on the suffering of Israeli hostages, but the sufferings of these foreign workers have been all but ignored. As one Thai survivor recounted to Reuters: “I went through hell.” It is time to tell their story.

According to reports, Hamas kidnapped at least 54 Thai on October 7. Besides the hostages, at least 39 Thai were killed that day. Nepal also suffered tragic losses: 10 Nepali students working on farms were murdered by Hamas, and many others were taken hostage. Filipino, Tanzanian, and Sri Lankan workers were also caught in the crossfire.

These were foreign workers who were not combatants, not settlers, not even Israeli citizens; they were trying to make a living and support families thousands of miles away. Hamas showed them no mercy. As Human Rights Watch documented, “Palestinian armed groups committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians during the October 7, 2023 assault on southern Israel.”

The attack was entirely indiscriminate – a true reflection of Hamas’s terrorist nature, which makes no difference between civilians and combatants, Israelis and other nationals.

It also underlines the lie of another fiction on which much media reporting of Hamas’s war depends: Its “resistance” is a heroic, unyielding protest against the heavy hand of an Israeli military “occupation.” Actually, it has to do with brutal violence visited upon anyone, including the most defenseless of people.

Thailand, with tens of thousands of its citizens working in Israel, managed to negotiate the release of some of its hostages. Five nationals, namely Pongsak Thenna, Sathian Suwannakham, Watchara Sriaoun, Bannawat Seathao, and Surasak Lamnau, were released from captivity by Hamas on January 30.
How Israel almost wiped out Hezbollah, only days after October 7
On October 7, 2023, when IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi left his house to go to IDF military headquarters, it was not a foregone conclusion that his destination should be Tel Aviv.

Rather, Halevi had a strong inclination to travel straight to the Gaza border to personally manage the fight against Hamas’s invasion up close.

After all, Halevi spent his career in the special forces in hairy and complex combat situations, specifically in Gaza during the 2008-09 invasion, and always preferred being close to the action to feel the pulse of his troops and of the enemy.

And yet from 7 a.m. on October 7, only minutes after the invasion had started, he had a double worry and suspicion that possibly both Hamas and Hezbollah were or would attack nearly at the same time or were coordinating to bring the IDF’s attention to the South to hit it with the more dangerous blow from the North.

To manage such a two-front battle, and especially keep his eye on the enemy from the North, he needed to do this from the “Pit” at Tel Aviv military headquarters with all of the unique breadth of multi-front information he could have there at his fingertips.

This was Halevi’s state of mind regarding Hezbollah not just from the first days but from the first minutes of the war. This concern of facing a multi-front war only grew when Hezbollah started firing mortars into Israel on October 8, 2023.

When Halevi presented his candidacy for IDF chief to Benny Gantz in 2022, he had submitted a document detailing the severity of the multi-front threat, such that at least he was more mentally ready for such a threat.

IDF intelligence, not the Mossad or the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), was the first to bring information about a potential Hezbollah invasion, such that an IDF preemptive major strike to set them off would have needed to occur immediately.

Then-IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva provided an update to Halevi regarding the threat information.Halevi started to bring this information to the attention of the political echelon, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant.

The IDF chief started holding consultations at a frenetic pace with IDF Northern Command chief Uri Gordon, air force chief Tomer Bar, a variety of IDF intelligence officials, and IDF Southern Command chief Yaron Finkelman.As the hours of consultation drew on, he was convinced this was the right move.

At some point, Halevi sent IDF intelligence officials to discuss the issue with Gallant and understood that the defense minister also supported the attack.

Getting the surprise on Hezbollah before it could initiate a major second front against Israel was a dramatic opportunity, and Halevi wanted to think dynamically about it.

Halevi understood that even as the majority of the defense establishment was in favor of a major strike on Hezbollah, IDF Analysis Intelligence chief Amit Saar was opposed, and Halevi supported Saar’s right to express this both within the military and to security cabinet members.


Al Jazeera Is an Obvious National Security Threat
Classifying Al Jazeera as a national security threat would align with previous U.S. actions against other foreign propaganda outlets. The network’s influence extends beyond traditional news coverage, as it shapes global opinion and policy discussions in a way that can undermine U.S. interests.

With Qatar using Al Jazeera as a political tool, the network’s ability to manipulate narratives and destabilize political environments remains a significant concern. Countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel have already taken steps to limit Al Jazeera’s influence, citing its role in spreading extremism and misinformation.

If left unchecked, Al Jazeera’s operations in the U.S. could continue to fuel anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment while misleading audiences about critical geopolitical issues. Restricting its reach through national security measures would help prevent the spread of misinformation and extremist propaganda.

The U.S. should take a multi-pronged approach: investigating the network’s foreign ties, enforcing stricter regulations, and increasing public awareness of its potential dangers.

A more transparent media environment is crucial for protecting democracy and national security. Enforcing foreign agent registration on Al Jazeera and evaluating its operations under security protocols would be a necessary step in safeguarding against state-sponsored disinformation.

Ensuring that American audiences receive news from unbiased sources will help prevent manipulation and reinforce journalistic integrity.

By taking these actions, the U.S. can protect its media landscape from foreign influence designed to undermine its values and security. The time to act is now—before Al Jazeera’s unchecked influence causes irreversible harm.
Australia’s Rising Tide of Antisemitism: Political Weakness and Dangerous Double Standards
Particularly concerning are the statements from key political figures, such as Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who has controversially equated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with authoritarian leaders like Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping. Wong stated, "The actions of Netanyahu should be scrutinized with the same seriousness as those of Putin and China, particularly in the context of human rights abuses." This comparison has been perceived by many as an unfair singling out of the Jewish state, diverting attention from the escalating antisemitism within Australia itself.

Moreover, Wong's selective criticism is evident in her reluctance to condemn the atrocities committed by former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 500,000 people during the Syrian Civil War. This inconsistency raises questions about the government's commitment to addressing genuine human rights violations.

The growing tendency among political leaders from the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens, to draw false equivalencies between antisemitism and Islamophobia is deeply problematic. While all forms of hatred must be condemned, equating the two can obscure the unique and increasingly dangerous rise of antisemitic attacks in Australia. This misguided rhetoric not only damages Australia's global reputation but also undermines our security interests. It also damages our standing and partnership with the State of Israel - the only true democracy in the Middle East.

By echoing the narratives of anti-Israel activists, Wong has failed to acknowledge the barbaric and torturous ethos of Hamas and its radical Islamic ideology. Hamas is not a political movement seeking peace or statehood but a terrorist organization committed to violent jihad against Israel and the West. The horrific intimidation tactics employed by Hamas against Israeli hostages starkly illustrate their utter disregard for Jewish life.

Recent statistics reveal that antisemitic incidents in Australia have reached unprecedented levels, yet left-wing political leaders often fail to address this trend with the urgency it warrants. By drawing false moral equivalencies between Islamophobia and antisemitism, figures like Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, despite their superficial calls for unity, inadvertently provide cover for antisemites. This approach minimizes the unique and dire threat posed by antisemitism in Australia, undermining the necessity for strong, targeted action to protect Jewish Australians.

Instead of drawing parallels between these distinct forms of hatred, Australian political leaders must confront the stark realities of rising antisemitic violence and ensure that Jewish communities across the nation feel supported and safe. I know I speak for many Australian Jews right now when I hope and pray for a change in Federal Government at the upcoming election in the coming months.


Freed IDF observers discharged from hospital after recovery from Hamas captivity
The five female IDF observers who were kidnapped during the October 7 attack and taken to Gaza were discharged from the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva on Wednesday.

A huge gathering of people stood outside of their homes in support, and the families expressed their gratitude to the medical staff who cared for the girls: “They were treated professionally and sensitively, with full consideration of their situation,” they said.

“We want to express our heartfelt thanks to Beilinson Hospital and the dedicated medical team who provided outstanding care for our daughters, the five observers who returned from Hamas captivity after 477 days.

Over the past 10 days since their return, Liri, Karina, Agam, Daniella, and Naama have been staying in a private, secure facility at Schneider Children’s Medical Center for Israel, where they received professional and compassionate care tailored to their special circumstances,” the families stated.

“We are now embarking on a journey of rehabilitation, and we are confident that the warm and professional support of the medical, psychological, and administrative teams, led by Dr. Lena Koren Feldman, Professor Noa Eliakim-Raz, and Ms. Avivit Zatlman, has been a significant and crucial step in the healing process for each of the women as they return home,” they added.

Lastly, the family expressed their gratitude to the people of Israel for their support and requested: “The women are facing a long rehabilitation journey, and we ask that their privacy, peace, and the time they need to slowly regain their strength be respected.”

The five observers planted an olive tree at the entrance of the hospital to mark their release. The Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus stated: “Their release is a powerful moment – five brave women who survived the horrors of captivity and began a unique rehabilitation process are now returning home for the first time. During their hospitalization and treatment, a special bond was formed between the returnees, their families, and the teams at Beilinson’s Department for Returnees and the Geha Mental Health Center.”


More Americans support than oppose deporting Pro-Hamas students, poll suggests
A larger percentage (43%) of American adults “strongly” or “somewhat” support U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for the deportation of international students accused of Jew-hatred, particularly anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7, according to a new Economist and YouGov poll.

Some 35% of respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed the executive order, and 21% didn’t have an opinion. Republicans were much likelier (71%) than Democrats (20%) to at least somewhat support deporting antisemitic international students.

The poll, conducted between Feb. 2-4, included 1,604 American adults.
Bacon taped to doors, Hitler salutes and assaults: Jewish students reveal scale of hostility on UK campuses
Jewish students at UK universities have faced assaults, bomb threats and “baby killer” slurs amid growing hostility on campus, exclusive JC research has revealed.

Forty-five per cent of respondents to an informal poll of more than 200 Jewish students on campuses across Britain said they had experienced antisemitism.

The survey, conducted between December 2023 and January 2024 in collaboration with the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), unearthed a disturbing volume of serious incidents.

Ellie Sultan, a second-year nursing student at the University of Liverpool, said she feared walking alone on campus after she was abused by masked students for having lunched with the university rabbi. Sultan said she was called a “f***ing Jew” and “baby killer” after images of her meeting the minister were posted online under the label “the Jews of Liverpool”.

She reported the incidents – the photos and the abuse – to the university, but because those involved had covered their faces with keffiyehs, authorities told her they could not help. The police and the Community Security Trust (CST) were also informed.

Kit Boulton, a student at the University of East Anglia, was called a “k*ke” while working a shift at the union bar. At the University of London’s Royal Holloway, a kippah-wearing student was assaulted when a man stopped his car on the edge of campus and screamed: “Go end yourself.” The student has stopped wearing his kippah for safety, “although that’s as much about how I felt off campus with anti-Israel feelings, as on campus”, he said.

The student – who operates his Jsoc’s social media account – also noticed a bomb threat written in Hebrew posted to the society’s Instagram feed. It was reported to the police and the CST, but when the student told Royal Holloway authorities, he felt “unsupported”.

At Bristol University, Rafael Mansoor was attacked in a nightclub by students at the university’s Gaza encampment after being recognised as a Jsoc member.

“They started going on about my views [on Israel] and got more aggressive. I didn’t give any definitive answer, and then they threw a drink in my face and started throwing punches. One hit me around the side of the head and eyebrow. I got a red bump on my face,” Mansoor said.

Research previously carried out by the Community Security Trust (CST) recorded a 117 per cent increase in antisemitic incidents on university campuses in the past two academic years.
Georgetown Law student group to host convicted PFLP terrorist
A member of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was involved in the 2019 bombing that killed an Israeli teenager is scheduled to speak at a Georgetown University Law Students for Justice in Palestine event next week, Jewish Insider has learned.

LSJP is hosting a Feb. 11 discussion entitled “Palestinian Prisoners, an Evening with Ribhi Karajah, student activist and former political prisoner,” according to flyers posted on campus and the group’s social media.

Karajah, a U.S. citizen, served three and a half years in an Israeli prison for his role — along with two other PFLP members — in an August 2019 roadside bombing in the West Bank in which 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb was killed while on a hike with her father and brother, both of whom sustained injuries.

Karajah was informed about the planned attack days earlier by several of his PFLP associates, and did nothing to stop it, he acknowledged in a plea agreement with an Israeli court.

“His presence on our campus threatens the security of all Jewish students,” Julia Wax Vanderwiel, a second-year student in the law school, told JI.

She noted that LSJP has a history of advocating “for Hamas on our campus [and] has members that attempt to discredit the Holocaust.” Weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, Georgetown Law hosted Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, who celebrated Hamas as a “liberation movement” and called the massacre a “resistance tactic.”

Karajah “will no doubt propagate those same students and validate their violent inclinations,” Wax Vanderwiel said, noting that administration has “ignored” what has “gone on so long.”
Columbia Encampment Leaders Sue School for 'Psychological Harm'—and Tap Professional Anarchist Who Stormed Campus Building as Their Rep
Three Columbia University encampment leaders are suing the school, alleging that its disciplinary actions against them caused "severe emotional and psychological harm." One of their attorneys is James Carlson, a professional anarchist who stormed Hamilton Hall last spring and clashed with a facilities worker.

Graduate students Aidan Parisi, Brandon Murphy, and Catherine Curran-Groome filed the suit on Monday. They seek "damage and other relief" from Columbia, alleging that the school's decision to suspend them and remove them from campus brought "severe emotional and psychological harm, including anxiety, depression, and trauma for which they are each seeking treatment." Their attorney, Carlson, accused Columbia of "repeatedly siccing the police on the plaintiffs to violently arrest them for peaceful protest" and of going "far out of its way to unjustly punish and silence these students."

Carlson, however, was a driving force behind violent anti-Israel activism on campus, having joined the group of Columbia students who stormed and occupied Hamilton Hall in April 2024. Inside the building, he clashed with a 45-year-old custodian, who spoke of getting "swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves." Parisi and Curran-Groome themselves guarded the perimeter of the illegal encampment they organized on Columbia's lawn, at times forcefully expelling students who attempted to enter what they called an "anti-Zionist space," video footage reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon shows.

The lawsuit—and Carlson's role in it—reflects the professional support student radicals at Columbia enjoy as they engage in illegal demonstrations.

Carlson, the son of the late prominent advertising executives Richard Tarlow and Sandy Carlson Tarlow, purchased a $2.3 million townhouse in Brooklyn's Park Slope in 2019 and lists its address on his active New York attorney registration. Though a felony conviction would lead to Carlson's disbarment, the Manhattan district attorney's office reduced Carlson's charge from felony burglary to misdemeanor criminal trespassing last year, meaning Carlson faces little risk of losing his law license, the Free Beacon reported.

The suit also attempts to use Columbia's lax disciplinary approach against the school.

While most student protesters at Columbia—including those who stormed Hamilton Hall—returned to class in good standing last year, Parisi, Murphy, and Curran-Groome remain suspended. As a result, their suit says Columbia "singled out the plaintiffs for unwarranted scrutiny and harassment."

In their suit, Parisi, Murphy, and Curran-Groome accuse Columbia of "negligent infliction of emotional distress," arguing that the school pursued disciplinary action against them "with the presumption that the plaintiffs would be suspended or expelled, evicted without notice, lose their healthcare, meal plans, and other benefits, get doxed, threatened, and assaulted, and suffer widespread and compounding harms to their careers, livelihoods, reputations, family relationships, and mental health."

At the same time, the suit openly discusses the students' participation in the illegal encampment that plagued Columbia's campus last spring as well as the "Palestinian Resistance 101" event that saw a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror organization advocate for violence against Jews.




Denialism Down Under: Antisemitism, Media Bias and Australia’s Blind Spot
The phrase gets repeated often—especially as antisemitism surges in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attacks—that Jews are the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.”

Jews have long been a bellwether for rising extremism and its broader threat to society; when antisemitism takes root, other forms of hatred and bigotry inevitably follow, leaving other minorities just as vulnerable.

Australia, however, appears determined to ignore this history lesson. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the country has seen an unprecedented wave of antisemitism. More than 2,000 incidents were reported between October 2023 and September 2024—a staggering fourfold increase from the previous year. And that number only reflects official reports; the uncounted cases of harassment, intimidation, and online vitriol push the real figure far higher.

If Australia is the mine, then its canaries are screeching. But instead of taking action, the country’s institutions, from government to law enforcement, seem more interested in pretending the problem isn’t real.

Take Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. This month, he held a press briefing to announce the findings of a national task force— formed in December 2024, more than a year after antisemitic violence had already spiraled out of control—to establish a database tracking such incidents. The task force received over 160 reports in just a few weeks, yet despite this flood of evidence, Albanese had a rather curious take on what was behind it.

According to the prime minister, some of these antisemitic crimes are being carried out by “people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors.”

Who’s paying them? Unclear. Where’s the evidence? Also unclear.

So, by Albanese’s logic, Jews in Australia aren’t facing a surge in homegrown antisemitism—they’re being targeted by mysterious, foreign-paid operatives. The cars set ablaze outside a building owned by a Jewish community leader on January 17? The work of a hired outsider, apparently. The Sydney synagogue defaced with swastikas on January 10? No particular ideology at play there, and certainly not Jew-hatred.

It’s a convenient way to sidestep responsibility. Because acknowledging the reality of antisemitism in Australia would mean confronting some uncomfortable truths—namely, just how widespread and deeply embedded the problem has become.

And at the heart of this denialism sits the Australian media.

There’s an unspoken arrangement at play: the media doesn’t press too hard, allowing officials to feign concern without actually doing much, while the government, in turn, enjoys the luxury of unchallenged complacency. The result? A climate where even violent, explicitly antisemitic attacks are treated as vague disturbances rather than the ideological threats they so clearly are.




Australian man arrested for hurling bacon while scrawling antisemitic graffiti
Police in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia have arrested a man who they say threw a “packet of bacon” at someone who interrupted his attempts at antisemitic graffiti.

The arrest, announced Tuesday, is the latest in a string as police crack down on antisemitic incidents in Melbourne and Sydney, home to Australia’s two largest Jewish communities.

The incident took place in a park on January 31, the Victoria Police said in a press release. A 68-year-old man was seen allegedly scrawling “prejudice-motivated graffiti” on a fence when “a passerby approached the male offender and was spat on and had a packet of bacon thrown at him,” the statement said.

He was charged with three crimes including “offensive graffiti.”

“There is absolutely no place at all in our society for antisemitic or hate-based symbols and behavior,” the police statement said. “Police will always treat reports of such crime seriously.”

The mayor of the suburb where the incident took place said it was a “cowardly” attack meant to stir fear in local Jews who are already reeling from the arson of a prominent synagogue in December.
Sydney woman found guilty after sending threatening message to Jewish school
A Sydney woman has escaped conviction after being found guilty over sending a threatening message to a Jewish school in what a magistrate called “despicable, disgusting” conduct.

Yasmin Mansour, of Bexley in the city's south, sent a lengthy message to the school 11 days after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel in 2023.

Within the message, the then 21-year-old wrote:

“You are the children of Satan.

“…get cancer and die a slow, painful death.

“Enjoy your day. I hope it’s your last.

“Praise Hitler. If only he was here to continue the mass destruction of your bloodline.”

Sky News has chosen not to identify the Jewish school.

Ms Mansour's lawyer told Downing Centre Local Court she had reacted “emotionally” to an Instagram “Story”, a temporary post, from the school about fundraising for Israel, which she interpreted as supporting a “genocide”.

The message was sent on Oct 18, before Israel had launched its full-scale ground invasion of Gaza in its war against Hamas.


With Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady: $8 million for Super Bowl ad to combat antisemitism
The Robert Kraft Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), owned by the Jewish billionaire and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is set to return to the Super Bowl on Feb. 9 with an $8 million star-studded ad featuring rapper Snoop Dogg and former New England Patriots quarterback and NFL legend Tom Brady. The ad will conclude with an updated message: “Stand Up to All Hate.” Last Super Bowl Sunday, FCAS aired a $7 million ad featuring Civil Rights icon and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speechwriter, Dr. Clarence Jones. The ad highlighted the dangers of staying silent in the face of rising antisemitism, ending with FCAS’s signature blue square and the tagline, “Stand Up to Jewish Hate.”

“We’re asking people… to reevaluate why they hate people,” Kraft said in an interview with CNBC on Monday.

Unlike last year’s spot, this ad does not explicitly mention antisemitism. Instead, it features Snoop Dogg and Brady exchanging vague, exaggerated insults — ”I hate you because you look different,” “I hate you because people I know hate you” — before concluding with the tagline, “The reasons for hate are as stupid as they sound.” Snoop Dogg then remarks, “Man, I hate that things are so bad that we have to do a commercial about it.” Brady agrees.

Over the past year, Kraft has been a leading voice in the fight against antisemitism and has emphasized the importance of strengthening ties between Black and Jewish communities. In April, he donated $1 million to the United Negro College Fund to support Black-Jewish partnership programs at historically Black colleges and universities. In June, he redirected his donations from Columbia University to Yeshiva University, citing concerns over the treatment of Jewish students and faculty during pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus.
Jewish activists slam Robert Kraft’s anti-hate Super Bowl ad: ‘He all-lives-mattered it’
Jewish activists slammed billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft for bankrolling a Super Bowl commercial against hatred – because it fails to mention the rise in antisemitism.

Kraft, who launched the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019, paid an estimated $8 million for the 30-second spot, named “No Reason to Hate,” which will air during Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.

It features former Pats great Tom Brady and rapper Snoop Dogg, who trade increasingly spiteful digs.

However, the duo avoid touching on the bias faced by any specific groups, leading Jewish activists to claim Kraft fumbled the opportunity to highlight the spike in antisemitism since Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 in Israel on Oct. 7, 2003..

“Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism is afraid to say the word antisemitism. He all-lives-mattered it,” Samantha Ettus, a Jewish activist, told The Post on Wednesday.

“Imagine a foundation to combat Asian hate running a Super Bowl ad without Asians and without mentioning Asians.”


Gaza “Civilian” Held Israeli Hostage for Hamas! Special Guest Zach Sage Fox | The Quad
How many civilians do you know hiding #hostages at home? Hear the #Gazan woman who’s proudly proclaiming that she held hostages and swearing that she would do it again! The Quad today is joined by special guests Zach Sage Fox and Rashi Elmaliah and, boy, is this a good one! We’ll be discussing all this week's events, including relocation of Gazans to Egypt, President Trump’s first weeks, the TikTok ban, PR & propaganda and scumbags and heroes!

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Panel and Topic
01:07 Hamas's Marketing Strategy and Its Impact
03:58 The Role of Trump in Middle Eastern Politics
09:54 Perceptions of Palestinians and Hamas
14:47 Media Narratives and Propaganda
19:50 The Complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
24:57 Critique of Media Coverage and Public Perception
28:46 The Woke Right and Media Dynamics
30:07 Israel's Unique Position in Conflict
31:56 Scumbags of the Week: Gaza Woman Brags about holding hostages
34:00 The Contrast of Lives: Israel vs. Gaza
36:00 Political Accountability: Chuck Schumer's Actions
38:54 The Complexity of Anti-Semitism in Politics
43:10 Heroes of the Week: Acknowledging Courage
51:06 Reflections on Leadership and Action




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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