Thursday, February 27, 2025

02/27 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A vile equivalence; Trauma Envy and the Campus Intifada; BBC admits Hamas family was paid for Gaza documentary; Barnard Admin Surrenders To Student Radicals

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A vile equivalence
Noa Argamani, the Israeli hostage who was rescued from Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces last June, addressed the U.N. Security Council this week. She spoke about being abducted into a “world of torture and humiliation,” where she tried to comfort two small girls who had been dragged with her into the darkness of the Hamas tunnels and where she saw her fellow hostage, Itai Svirsky, brutally murdered.

Her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, who was dragged into the Gaza Strip with her, remains in captivity. Of the 63 remaining hostages, 36 are believed to be dead.

Argamani’s raw testimony was a necessary corrective to the unconscionable indifference in the halls of the United Nations to Israeli suffering and its shocking embrace of Israel’s genocidal attackers.

Shortly afterward, however, someone else addressed the Security Council. This was Daniel Levy, the British former Israeli peace negotiator and now president of the U.S./Middle East Project think tank.

Referring to Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the murdered Israeli infant hostages who were buried in Israel in heartbreaking scenes the following day, he said: “A minute of silence for each of the Bibas children would be appropriate, as would a minute of silence for each of the more than 18,000 Palestinian children murdered in Israel’s devastation of Gaza. That silence would extend to over 300 hours.”

What a breathtakingly vile comment. Hamas terrorists murdered 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel with their bare hands and mutilated their bodies to conceal the crime. How could anyone equate this monstrous depravity with the fate of children in Gaza killed unintentionally in a war to defend Israel against genocide—killed, moreover, because Hamas uses Gaza’s children as human shields and cannon fodder?

Moreover, the 18,000 figure is merely a claim by Hamas that notoriously makes no distinction between dead civilians and combatants, has reclassified numerous adult fatalities as children and includes as “children” teenagers who serve as Hamas gunmen.

Worse, Levy said all this in front of Argamani herself. As she stared at him, Levy claimed sanctimoniously that it was “important to hear your testimony of an awful experience to which no human should ever be subjected”—and then went on to diminish that experience by equating it with a stream of distortions and unverified Hamas propaganda claims.

He hailed as an equivalent victim Dr. Hassan abu Safiyeh, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who he said was still being held in detention by the Israelis and mistreated.

The IDF, however, raided that hospital because it was a Hamas hub under the terrorist group’s control. One terrorist arrested there admitted to the IDF that abu Safiyeh had been “orchestrating the terror and Hamas activities within the compound.”
Seth Mandel: Trauma Envy and the Campus Intifada
In other words—and this is the key point in understanding the escalation—these students at Columbia University and other expensive universities have been the most pampered young adults in the history of the universe. Though of course there will be individual exceptions, as a group these folks have been handed more and asked to do less than anyone who walked the earth before them.

The students themselves unintentionally acknowledged this generality last night. After they left their occupation, many of them made a circle outside and cultishly chanted a bunch of slogans, including: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

I don’t know how people who have actually been kept in chains would feel about this kind of appropriation by the ultra-privileged, but it tells us something important about the mindset of the comfortable elite: They find themselves and their lives utterly boring.

These activists’ anger at previous generations isn’t for withholding opportunity, it’s for the opportunity itself. There are two kinds of Columbia students who talk unironically about losing their chains: those who know they are privileged and pretend otherwise as a form of escapism, and those who actually think being told to go to class at their expensive private institution is what everybody in history has meant by “chains.”

In the past, this kind of progressive trauma envy took the form of poverty tourism. A trip to Cuba to gawk in admiration at the victims of your own ideology, before getting on a plane and going back to your Manhattan apartment, has long been practically a rite of passage, the closest thing the American left has to a bar mitzvah.

But the mixing in of Palestinian nationalism adds a new and escalatory element to this worldview.

Palestinian advocacy too often teeters into trauma envy. The most obvious example is the obsession with claiming that Jews are perpetrating a Holocaust against Arabs in the Middle East, a lie whose overuse is entirely intentional on the part of anti-Zionists. Holocaust envy has only become more explicit: We see Palestinian journalists and activists calling themselves a “Holocaust survivor” or saying “everyone in Gaza is a Holocaust survivor” and declaring they “will proudly wear the Palestinian Keffiyeh to work, especially during the Palestinian Holocaust, just as I would have worn the Star of David during the Jewish Holocaust.”

To underline the point, “pro-Palestinian” activists in the West routinely vandalize Holocaust memorials, protest Holocaust museums, and fetishize the appropriation of Anne Frank to an uncomfortable degree. Last month, the UK’s Islamic Human Rights Commission went so far as to explicitly say Holocaust commemorations that do not include ceremonies for Gaza should be boycotted.

But it isn’t just the Holocaust. In the early part of the 20th century, Arab leaders openly acknowledged the Jewish connection to the land. When that morphed into Palestinian nationalism, suddenly it became obligatory to deny that history and to perform a sort of Replacement Theology whose writers embarked on an ambitious appropriation project: The Wandering Jew became “The Wandering Palestinian,” Palestinian rewrites of iconic novels like The City Without Jews appeared, Golda Meir’s quotes were repurposed against the Jews.

Trauma envy, a direct outgrowth of progressive grievance culture, is warping minds at a rapid clip, spreading far and wide. But like most other forms of anti-Semitism, it’s just easier to see at Columbia.
The truth about ‘No Other Land’
The Oscar-nominated documentary “No Other Land” portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the microcosm of a collection of Palestinian Arab settlements called Masafer Yatta. In that cluster of makeshift villages, the film gives the impression that impoverished Palestinians confront the oppression of Israeli military demolition crews in an existential struggle to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes, the displacement of their people and the theft of their land. But ultimately, we are told, the righteous Palestinian resistance survives.

The reality of Masafer Yatta is altogether different. The history of that area exemplifies how Palestinians illegally seize plots of land in Judea and Samaria, and how Israel lawfully defends against these incursions.

The 1920 San Remo Treaty and 1922 Palestine Mandate, under the supervision of the League of Nations, created the state that became Israel. The West Bank, known historically as Judea and Samaria, was part of that allocated territory. These instruments of international law were justified by widespread recognition that the designated land was the ancestral homeland of the Jews.

The State of Israel emerged in 1948 and acceded to membership in the United Nations a year later. By that point, Jordan had illegally invaded and occupied the eastern portion of Jerusalem and land on the west bank of the Jordan River. However, in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel liberated those territories from Jordanian occupation. Israel then validly applied its sovereign governance to eastern Jerusalem but decided to forego implementing its sovereign right to the so-called West Bank area pending negotiation of peace deals with its Arab rivals.

The Palestinians never had a state that could be occupied. They never even had a treaty or comparable agreement granting them legal ties to eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the original 1964 Palestine National Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) expressly disclaimed Palestinian rights to those three domains because they were occupied by PLO ally countries: Jordan and Egypt.

Israel and the Palestinians began an effort to make peace in 1993 when they signed the first of six agreements known as the Oslo Accords. In the area called the West Bank, the accords awarded Israel interim control over a territory labeled “Area C,” and granted the Palestinians interim control of Area A. Area B was marked as shared.

Masafer Yatta lies in Area C, which places it under Israeli civilian and security control.

About 200,000 Palestinians reside in Area C. Some of them live in Masafer Yatta. But in 1999, when Palestinians erected an additional batch of shacks in Masafer Yatta, they violated the Oslo Accords by failing to obtain building permits from Israel’s Civil Administration.

Palestinian Arabs have orchestrated many such unlicensed land grabs in Area C. Using slapdash combinations of cement blocks, mud bricks, corrugated metal sheets, plastic tarps and portable electric generators, they create chess pawns strategically positioned to block the buildout of Israeli communities and enlarge the pretense of “Palestinian land.” The decision to add Palestinian settlements in Masafer Yatta was especially provocative because that barren expanse had been classified in the 1980s as an Israeli military training zone.


The forever enemy: How antisemites brand Jews as the perfect evil
The features that make antisemitism a truly bewilderingly unique form of hate are too many to elucidate but there is one to which I would like to draw your attention.

It seems that there is no “right way” to be a Jew. There is no direction the Jew can take in order to be deemed acceptable due to any stereotype or prejudicial notion.

In this vein, virtually any social, political, or economic dichotomy can become tainted by antisemitism. Who “the Jew” votes for, his pet cause of choice, and racial identification. It all becomes a rather predictable Rorschach test for one’s own prejudices.

Selling antisemitism to the masses
Consider the most obvious. If you are an antisemite and a fervent capitalist, then Jews are the Communists, conspiring to overthrow the free enterprise economic system and start anew. If you are an avowed Communist, it’s the Jews who are truly behind the curtain of international banking, corporate greed, and what have you.

Hitler knew this: National-Socialism. Two sociopolitical philosophies in diametric opposition. Yet, depending on one’s own fiery prejudice, the Jew was the common denominator, and thus, the consensus political target for extermination.

Religion no doubt plays its part (as do secularism and atheism). There’s a derivative brand of Jew hate just for you. Go after those Orthodox Jews and their “barbaric” ritualistic circumcision and kosher slaughter.

Religious and holding firm in classical values? Just flip the script upside down and read it backward. It’s those godless Jews behind feminism, pornography, and homosexuality trying to corrupt our children and erode our traditional way of life.

It simply does not end. It only changes contextually every now and then.

Antisemites abhors Jews equally for the age-old stereotype of greed as for their philanthropy. Walking through a university campus or passing a hospital and seeing the Jewish names of donors on the building and they think: “Damn rich Jews putting their names everywhere like they own the place!”

Again, two completely diametrically opposite stereotypes – neither one an accurate depiction of the average Jewish person’s attitude toward money and charity – paint every Jewish person as one or the other, contingent on nothing more than circumstantial convenience.

Perhaps the recent most example is playing out currently in our global discourse on coloniality and race. In Europe, where it once was convenient to scapegoat the stateless Jew, “othered,” as the enlightened like to say, and ostracized him for his origins in the Orient. Then, the Jews were perhaps slightly darker in complexion and not truly part of any European country. Once Jews achieved statehood in Israel, overnight they became “white supremacists, “European colonizers” and the like.

Never mind that Sephardim, Jews from the Iberian peninsula who went on to populate Diaspora communities, particularly in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, account for the majority of Jews currently living in Israel.
Why Britain’s elites give a free pass to Islamism
For the British establishment, Islam is treated less as a religion and more a racial badge. To attack Islamist extremism is supposedly to attack a ‘brown-skinned’ community – a notion that smothers debate and only deepens divides between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Apparently, to criticise political Islam – or heaven forbid, the religion of Islam itself – is to engage in crude ‘populism’. Concern about Islamism is considered the preserve of a low-brow, working-class sentiment. Anyone who raises the alarm must be little more than an uneducated, racist rabble-rouser.

In turn, many in the elite see themselves as the protectors of Muslims, as shielding them from the hordes of neo-fascists in the working classes (even though these are largely imaginary). Others fear being seen as Islamophobic. This is exactly what allowed horrors like the grooming gangs to go on for so long. It has also let Islamist terror attacks unfold unchallenged.

No doubt this same patronising view of Muslims contributed to the BBC’s screw-ups over that Gaza documentary. In the Beeb’s black-and-white worldview, Muslims must always be the victims. Even if those Muslims might be members of Hamas, which is waging a genocidal, anti-Semitic war against Israel.

A society that refuses to recognise the dangers of radical Islam will struggle to protect its citizens from the consequences – whether that’s terror attacks or the shutting down of free speech by mob rule. The free pass we’ve given to Islamism must be revoked immediately.
Brendan O'Neill: How luvvies became the useful idiots of Hamas
So this is what Lineker and Co are praising: a documentary that was not only narrated by the son of a minister in a bigoted government, but which also whitewashed the Jew-baiting of some of the interviewees. Which sanitised a Gazan’s openly stated support for ‘holy war’ against ‘Yahudy’ (‘the Jews’). What’s more, it’s been discovered that, on 7 October, during Hamas’s pogrom, one of doc’s cameramen posted the words ‘the flood’ alongside a saluting emoji on social media. I don’t know about you, but I would seriously interrogate my anti-racist credentials if I ever found myself gushing over a film made by people who are connected with or who cheered the psycho Islamists who murdered more Jews in one day than anyone else since the Nazis.

Ask yourself this: what would these faux-virtuous libs say if the BBC made a film about the American South fronted by the son of a member of the KKK? They’d go mad. They’d call the Beeb ‘racist adjacent’. But the son of a man with ties to Hamas? No biggie. They only killed a thousand or so Jews.

Their letter says the BBC’s removal of the documentary from iPlayer was an act of ‘politically motivated censorship’. Apparently, the Beeb has kowtowed to a lobby hell-bent on ‘discredit[ing] the documentary’. Now, it’s my view that the BBC should not have taken the doc down – once you have broadcast something, you should leave it up, and let the public freely judge its merits. But to hear illiberal liberals hold forth on free speech is too much to take. These people were schtum when women were censored for saying people with cocks are men and when Brits of all persuasions found their names being logged by the cops for committing the Orwellian sin of a ‘non-crime hate incident’. Yet now they want to pose as the heirs to John Milton? It’s amazing: they’ve finally discovered the importance of free speech and all it took was the deplatforming of a doc in which people openly dream of further holy war against Yahudy.

To me, the worst part of the letter is its claim that the criticism of the film was fuelled by a ‘weaponisation of identity’. I get a chill when I hear that word ‘weaponisation’, and here’s why: it is almost always aimed at Jews. We hear about the ‘weaponisation of anti-Semitism’, the ‘weaponisation of the Holocaust’ and now the ‘weaponisation of identity’. What identity, guys? Say it. Try to imagine Muslims or black people being accused of ‘weaponising’ their trauma for moral gain. It wouldn’t happen. And if it did, these same letter-writers would go nuts. As German political scientist Lars Rensmann says, accusing people of making ‘illegitimate’ racism charges is mostly seen as unacceptable, yet claims that the Jews weaponise anti-Semitism are ‘ubiquitous’.

One more thing happened yesterday: the body of Israeli hostage Tsachi Idan was finally released by Hamas. On 7 October, Tsachi’s 18-year-old daughter, Maayan, was murdered in front of him by Hamas militants. With his hands covered in her blood, Tsachi desperately tried to comfort his other two kids as they cried: ‘Are they killing us?’ Hamas livestreamed the whole thing on the Facebook page of Tsachi’s wife, so her family would witness the violent persecution of their loved ones. Then Tsachi was taken hostage, and at some point he was murdered. Where are the luvvies’ thoughts on that? If you turn a blind eye to events as fascistic as this one, you will a blind to anything. A new rule: say nothing about Tsachi Idan, Shiri Bibas and the hundreds of other Jews murdered by Hamas, and you forfeit your right to ever comment on racism again.


Canadian website publishes names, bios of citizens who served in IDF
The non-profit news website The Maple published a list of 85 Canadians and Canadians with Israeli citizenship who have served in the IDF. The website announced that this is the initial list and that it intends to publish additional lists of additional Canadians that have joined the Israeli military.

Those behind the publication of the database conducted thorough research. In addition to the names of those who served in the IDF, the biography of each of them was also detailed. Some of the entries also include posts and videos that those Canadian Jews uploaded to their social media accounts. At this stage, at least, the site does not outright accuse them of committing war crimes while serving in the IDF.

The site also calls on anyone who knows a Canadian who has at any time served in the IDF to let them know. "You should share their name, how you know they were in the military, and any public sources you have that prove it."

The project defines a 'Canadian' as "someone who is a Canadian citizen, and/or has lived in Canada for a significant amount of time, and/or currently lives in Canada." Among the 85 names that appear on the list, is the name of Ben Mizrachi, 22, a former IDF medic killed while helping victims of the Nova Festival on October 7. The person who compiled the list found a video in which his mother talks about her son.

The website states that this is the first part of the database, which was prepared by the managing editor of the opinion section of The Maple website, Davide Mastracci, and that more names will be published in the near future.

Jews and Israelis in the Jewish community in Canada say that the publication of the database adds another layer to the general feeling that there has been a rise of antisemitism in Canada.

"It's stirring up the community," said an Israeli who has lived in Canada for five years. "It's running wild in our groups. In general, you see, our whole sense of 'security' here has been radically undermined for a long time. There will always be those who ignore it and say that it's more dangerous in Israel. That may be true, but Canada, which was the symbol of a comfortable and safe life for Jews, has long since ceased to be so. There are antisemitic incidents all the time and the great concern is the lack of intervention by the police here. Just last Sunday police refused to take action against protesters who celebrated the deaths of the Bibas family members."

The Israeli resident of Canada added: "It is criminal naivety to publish such a list as part of freedom of expression. It opens a window, God forbid, for serious things that he certainly would not write publicly. What else needs to happen for those who need to wake up? We are experiencing processes here from 1930s Europe. Marking Jews/Israelis, excluding them, shaming them in public. The point is that there is no doubt that the whole world is against us, but Canada is no longer a safe place for Jews."
It's not enough for the BBC to take down this Gaza documentary. If there's been payments to Hamas terrorists, then those to blame MUST go, writes Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister SHARREN HASKEL
Let me also remind BBC Director-General Tim Davie and his colleagues of a few salient points. Israel was invaded by Hamas on October 7 in what became the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel did not seek the conflict in Gaza, but we must defend ourselves against Hamas, which continues today, despite 16 months of conflict, to say it wishes to destroy us, and would commit another October 7 all over again.

Hamas abducted 251 people from the Jewish state that day. The State of Israel has an obligation to bring all the hostages home.

In Britain, anti-semitic incidents exploded after October 7. According to the Community Security Trust, a body that works to protect British Jews, ‘of the 4,103 instances of anti-Jewish hate reported in 2023, 2,699 (66 per cent) occurred on or after 7 October’.

Threatening
By constantly promoting an anti-Israel agenda, the BBC is playing into the hands of Jew-haters. I know how threatening my friends in London have found the endless anti-Israel marches since October 2023, where the most vile pro-Hamas propaganda was openly paraded in the streets of the British capital.

Given that the BBC is funded by the British taxpayer, and is one of the largest media organisations in the world, it not only has an obligation to the British taxpayer, but also to the millions who tune in around the world, to be accurate and not to promote terrorist propaganda.

Britain is, after all, the mother of parliaments, and there is ample opportunity to scrutinise your national broadcaster.

However, given there are legitimate questions being asked by the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, the leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch and other key public figures about whether British licence fee-payers’ money ended up in the hands of Hamas, then as the Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, I am obliged to take a stand.

It is not enough that the BBC has removed the Gaza documentary from iPlayer. There must be a thorough investigation into the entire saga and, if there has been collusion or payments to the terrorist enemies of Britain and Israel, those ultimately responsible, at the BBC, must go.
BBC admits family of Hamas minister WAS PAID for Gaza documentary
The BBC has admitted that the family of a Hamas minister was paid after his son narrated the documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone.

The corporation removed the documentary from iPlayer after it emerged that the boy, Abdullah, is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, the terrorist group’s deputy minister of agriculture.

On Thursday evening the BBC, which has now conducted an initial review of the programme, revealed that independent production company Hoyo Films, which made the documentary, told it that the boy’s mother had been paid “a limited sum of money for the narration”.

The disclosure follows concerns from shadow culture secretary Stuart Andrew that public funds had “indirectly supported a terrorist organisation”.

After the discovery about Abdullah Al-Yazouri, who speaks about life in the territory amid the war between Israel and the terrorist group, the BBC added a disclaimer to the programme and reluctantly removed it from its online catch-up service.

A BBC spokesperson said the its review “has identified serious flaws in the making of this programme”.

It added: “Some of these were made by the production company and some by the BBC; all of them are unacceptable. BBC News takes full responsibility for these and the impact that these have had on the corporation’s reputation. We apologise for this. Nothing is more important than the trust that our audiences have in our journalism.

“This incident has damaged that trust. While the intent of the documentary was aligned with our purpose – to tell the story of what is happening around the world, even in the most difficult and dangerous places – the processes and execution of this programme fell short of our expectations.

“Although the programme was made by an independent production company, who were commissioned to deliver a fully compliant documentary, the BBC has ultimate editorial responsibility for this programme as broadcast.”


‘Worst Thing The BBC Has EVER Done!’ Corporation SLAMMED Over Gaza Documentary
Talk’s Jeremy Kyle is joined by chief political writer at Spiked, Brendan O’Neill, discussing the biggest stories of the day.

First, Sir Keir Starmer has declined to say whether money for a deal with the Chagos Islands would come out of the increase in defence spending.

Plus, Scotland’s First Minister has said ‘trans women are women’ in his first Bute House press conference.

And, Gary Lineker is among 500 media figures who have called for the BBC to reinstate a Hamas-linked documentary.

The corporation took down a controversial programme about Gaza from iPlayer while it carries out “further due diligence with the production company”.

00:00 Defence spending
07:54 John Swinney
12:07 BBC Gaza documentary


BBC "Failed Jewish Community" | National Broadcaster RINSED Over Hamas Mess Up
Russell Langer from the Jewish Leadership Council has blasted the BBC by saying the broadcaster "has failed" the Jewish community. Speaking to Jeremy Kyle on Talk, the BBC has been accused of whitewashing the views of some Palestinians after repeatedly wrongly mistranslating references to Jews.

The BBC stands accused of failing to carry out basic due diligence after a recent documentary had to be pulled after some of the narration was revealed to have come from the son of a senior Hamas official.

Gary Lineker also faces criticism after he, along with a number of other celebrities, criticised the BBC for removing the controversial Hamas linked documentary.

As an ever increasing number of people move away from traditional media sources, the BBC faces a massive challenge.




Portrait of a Digital Propagandist
My recent investigation for Pirate Wires exposed an extensive propaganda network that coordinates the dissemination of content sourced from foreign terror organizations across Reddit. The piece shows how widespread and deliberate the network is, with clear procedures and protocols for vetting new members, communicating online, posting, and coordinating engagement like mass upvoting or downvoting.

But the investigation also accomplished something else: through a series of unexpected developments following publication, it led me down a rabbit hole following the workings of a highly influential node within the Israel-Palestine information war. This was an anonymous person who goes by Zei_Squirrel, who’s amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across multiple platforms, and who directs them in targeted raids on strategically important discourse operations. As I got further and further down the rabbit hole, I began to realize that — taken together — Zei’s tactics illustrate a detailed, comprehensive blueprint for how information warfare is fought today.

By any definition, Zei_Squirrel is a super-soldier in the Israel-Palestine information landscape. But her significance goes beyond geopolitical propaganda (notwithstanding her frantic monomania regarding that conflict), and provides a rare glimpse into not just online propaganda tactics and methodologies, but how individual operators use a combination of disruption, radicalization, personal charm, online celebrity, resource coordination, and sheer manpower to achieve clear-cut strategic objectives on the digital battlefield. Zei is known for posting extremist anti-Western, anti-Israel content at huge scale. With 273,000 followers on X, and nearly 6,000 subscribers to her Telegram channel, the operation she’s running is, on its face, clearly influential. She’s as a kind of ligature connecting pro-Hamas efforts across major online platforms — Reddit, Wikipedia, Discord, X, and Substack — which makes her a kind of super-operator for the network.

The Squirrel effect has also spilled over into the world of Twitch streaming, with Zei going after two of the biggest streamers online — Ethan Klein and Destiny. The relatively pro-Israel stances of Klein and Destiny, both of whom are avowedly left of center, has prompted the rabid wrath of Zei, who called Klein one of the “most depraved amoral scumbags [to] walk this earth, an exact mirror-image of every fanatical Zionist” who exhibits “pathological murderous rape-cult depravities.” Similarly, Zei accused Destiny of being a “vile depraved sex creep who has been running a sex cult with the fans he grooms in his community,” and called him the “Jeffrey Epstein of streaming.”

Zei’s manic obsession with sexual crime is far from incidental. Rather — as we’ll see — it’s very likely her overriding strategic imperative. As Zei herself likes to endlessly repeat: every accusation is a confession.

It took Zei just a few hours to react to my investigation with a series of furious, defamatory posts on X. I was a “deranged genocidal Zionist propagandist freak,” and a “deranged scumbag freak.” Zei even threatened me, saying, “I promise you this will end very badly for you,” and called me out on her Discord server, assuming I lurk there.
Jewish PSAC members alarmed over union employee's pro-Hezbollah tweets
Jewish members of one of Canada’s largest public service unions are alarmed over concerning tweets by a union employee — an individual with a history of antisemitic social media posts.

A letter to Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) leadership from public servant Chelsea Rosen described social media posts by PSAC Senior Negotiator Hassan Husseini as both disturbing and unacceptable — and demanded the union take action.

“PSAC should hold its employees to a high standard, both in and outside the workplace,” read the letter, obtained by the Toronto Sun.

“A union is meant to represent all members, regardless of background, and provide a safe and inclusive space for everyone. Sadly, Mr. Husseini’s behavior is actively contributing to an environment where Jewish members feel unsafe and unrepresented.”

Invitations to PSAC for comment went unacknowledged.

Husseini took to social media after Sunday’s funeral for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, posting and retweeting disturbing X posts mourning the liquidated terrorist.

Among posts he retweeted include an antisemitic diatribe describing Zionists as “disgusting, insecure, violent, soulless, culture-less, death colony. I know they’ll be gone soon enough, but what a gross thing to deal with in the meantime.”

Husseini also posted a Hezbollah emblem on his X account, a signet with Arabic writing coloured in the Hezbollah colours of yellow and green.

That symbol, says Boal Shapira — an analyst with of the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Centre — roughly translates into “we will keep our pledge,” and is used by Hezbollah supporters as an pledge of allegiance after Nasrallah’s funeral.


Barnard Admin Surrenders To Student Radicals Who Stormed Campus Building, Shields Them From Police
The mob of Columbia University and Barnard College students who stormed a Barnard building Wednesday afternoon appear to have gotten off scot-free. The radicals were allowed to leave peacefully after missing their first deadline to leave and being promised that they’d be protected from the police.

Video footage shows droves of keffiyeh-clad student radicals shoving their way into the campus building, Milbank Hall, physically clashing with at least two outnumbered security guards and hospitalizing one. Inside, the agitators held a dean captive, covered up security cameras, broke into an office, vandalized walls, and forced class cancellations. Their main demand: reverse the expulsion of two Barnard students who stormed an Israeli history class at Columbia last month, targeting Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers.

A Columbia student confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that campus public safety called the New York Police Department but said officers were not given entry because Barnard was "hesitant to do anything that could lead to physical confrontation."

For hours, demonstrators with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)—the Ivy League’s most notorious anti-Semitic student group—and Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter sat in rows outside the office of Barnard dean Leslie Grinage, demanding amnesty for the two expelled students.

At one point, Grinage asked if she’d be allowed to use the bathroom, given that she had been sequestered in her office for hours. The student radicals jokingly told her no but eventually allowed her, booing her on the way to the restroom.

"Earlier today, a small group of masked protesters forcibly entered Milbank Hall and physically assaulted a Barnard employee, sending them to the hospital. They encouraged others to enter campus without identification, showing blatant disregard for the safety of our community," Barnard vice president for strategic communications Robin Levine told the Free Beacon just before 9 p.m. Wednesday. "We have made multiple good-faith efforts to deescalate. Barnard leadership offered to meet with the protesters—just as we meet with all members of our community—on one simple condition: remove their masks. They refused. We have also offered mediation."

Levine added that school administrators ordered the radicals to vacate by 9:30 p.m. or the college would "be forced to consider additional, necessary measures to protect our campus," Levine added. That demand came after the building had been occupied for several hours.
Anti-Israel protesters physically assault Barnard College staff in university building takeover
A Barnard College staff member was assaulted and sent to the hospital on Wednesday evening by anti-Israel demonstrators who stormed the college’s main administrative building and remained there for several hours, chanting “resistance is justified when people are occupied” and “intifada revolution,” a spokesperson for the university confirmed to Jewish Insider.

“Earlier today, a small group of masked protesters forcibly entered Milbank Hall and physically assaulted a Barnard employee, sending them to the hospital,” Barnard spokesperson Robin Levine told JI. “They encouraged others to enter campus without identification, showing blatant disregard for the safety of our community.”

Levine said that the university has made “multiple good-faith efforts to deescalate.”

“Barnard leadership offered to meet with the protesters — just as we meet with all members of our community — on one simple condition: remove their masks. They refused. We have also offered mediation,” she said.

Masked protesters left Milbank Hall around 10:30 p.m, after more than six hours, under the tentative agreement that Barnard President Laura Rosenbury and Dean Leslie Grinage would meet with the students Thursday afternoon. “The masked protesters left Milbank Hall after receiving final written notice and being informed that Barnard would be forced to consider additional necessary measures to protect the campus if they did not leave on their own. No promises of amnesty were made, and no concessions were negotiated,” Levine said. The original deadline the school had set for the protesters to vacate was 9:30 p.m.

A spokesperson for the NYPD told JI that a police report for the assault had been filed as of Thursday morning. According to the report, “a 41-year-old male stated he was shoved by numerous individuals and complained of pain about the body. The male was removed by EMS to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in stable condition.” There are no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing, the NYPD said.


The era of Nasrallah is over: The era of his legacy has begun
On Sunday, tens of thousands of mourners gathered in and around Beirut’s largest stadium for the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizballah. Israeli jets flew low over the area during the proceedings, to send a message that the terrorist group remains vulnerable. Yossi Mansharof comments on the funeral’s meaning:

It was Hizballah’s show of force, a way to project messages to its rivals and enemies in the shadow of the unprecedented blow it suffered from Israel. At home in Lebanon, it seeks to convey to its Shiite support, which is its source of security and political power, that it is still the beloved organization despite criticism from its social base, due to the hardships of war. The massive funeral also signaled to Hizballah’s political rivals that, irrespective of its political weakening, as reflected in the appointment of the Lebanese army commander Joseph Aoun to the presidency, the group remains a significant factor in politics.

To its enemies outside Lebanon, mainly Israel and the United States, Hizballah needs to demonstrate that it is still strong, regardless of its extensive loss of leaders and commanders and serious damage to its missile and rocket systems.

The widespread use of Nasrallah’s figure since his assassination, especially in the funeral, symbolizes a transition from the Nasrallah era to an era of his legacy.


Garry Kasparov: Iran and Its Terror Proxies Depend on Russian Support
Despite the many dangers in Syria, the country now poses far less of a threat to Israel—and to its own people—than during the reign of the Assad clan. The fall of that regime was made possible by both Israel’s devastating assault on Hizballah forces in Lebanon and the fact that Russia was bogged down in Ukraine. Garry Kasparov and Uriel Epshtein explain the close alignment of interests between Kyiv and Jerusalem:

The so-called axis of resistance—including Hamas, Hizballah, the Houthis, and the erstwhile Assad regime in Syria—is responsible for the deaths of scores of Americans, thousands of Israelis, and untold numbers of their fellow Arabs. That sinister alliance is most commonly associated with Iran. But Russia is the Islamic Republic’s chief enabler, and there is no axis of resistance without Kremlin largesse.

When Israel struck back at Hizballah last year after months of missile attacks by the Shiite terror group, the IDF made an alarming discovery. As much as 70 percent of the Hizballah weapons that Israeli forces captured in Lebanon were Russian made. These weren’t cold-war relics, either: some of the seized arms were manufactured as recently as 2020. Even more dangerously, Russia is actively assisting Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons and an increasingly lethal missile stockpile.

A defeated Russia would create a weak link in the Iranian terror axis. And a victorious Ukraine would be an even more useful partner for the U.S. and Israel. For the sake of advancing shared American-Israeli security interests, Kyiv is an ally very much worth the investment.
Miller detained by counter terror cops on return from Hezbollah leader’s funeral
UK counter-terrorism police have detained anti-Zionist professor David Miller at Heathrow Airport after he returned from the funeral ceremony of former Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.

The sacked Bristol University academic confirmed he was quizzed by SO15 plain clothes officers of the Counter Terrorism Command after arriving at Heathrow Airport on Monday evening.

Miller told the Iranian linked Press TV channel he was next detained for three and a half hours, where he was questioned about his visit to Beirut for the funeral of the leader of the proscribed organisation.

“They tried to find out if I was a supporter of terrorism,as they would call it, and whether I had intentionally met with members of illegal organisations,” he said.

He claimed he had covered the Hezbollah funeral in the role of a journalist.

Miller sparked anger and complaints to counter-terror police after he had posted updates on X of the Hezbollah leader’s funeral, after he was assassinated by Israel last year, along with Hashem Safieddine, his deputy.

Accompanied by footage of the funeral showing crowds waving yellow Hezbollah flags, he described the scenes as “a tide of humanity” with “yellow flags fluttering in the sun”.

“A few people seem to have made it to the stadium already,” he wrote. “But, yeah, the Axis of Resistance is definitely finished.”

Speaking to Press TV Miller blamed “Zionists” and the former Tory minister Robert Jenrick for the actions of the police.

“They are under immense pressure from Zionists,” Miller told the channel.

Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, had said: “David Miller isn’t even bothering to hide his antisemitism any more.

“He’s now openly boasting of his support for a proscribed terrorist group. It’s shocking that for so long he held a senior position at Bristol University.”
Payman apologises following backlash over claim Iran ‘incredible’ place for women

Survivor meets Eisenhower family
Eva Clarke, a Holocaust survivor born in the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945, met with Merrill Eisenhower, great-grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, at an event in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

The gathering, which was facilitated by the International March of the Living, marked the beginning of a collaboration between the Holocaust remembrance NGO and the Eisenhower family, it said in a press release.

Clarke—who was born just days before Mauthausen was liberated by U.S. forces led by Eisenhower—was said to have expressed her gratitude.

“I am the infant your great-grandfather and the American soldiers saved,” Clarke told Merrill Eisenhower, adding: “Had they not arrived in time, I would not be standing here today.” Eva Clarke being held by her mother in the Mauthausen concentration camp after liberation, May 1945. Credit: Courtesy of Eva Clarke.

As part of the new partnership with the Eisenhower family, Merrill Eisenhower announced that he would participate in the 2025 March of the Living and walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah)—set to be marked on April 23-24.

Eisenhower will march alongside Clarke and thousands of participants from around the world, honoring both the victims of the Holocaust and the heroism of those who fought to end the tyranny of Nazi Germany.


Newly appointed Michigan Democratic official threatened to leave party over its support for Israel
As Democrats consider how to regroup from their electoral losses after President Donald Trump’s victory last year, the newly elected chair of the Michigan Democratic Party has given an early indication that he will throw a lifeline to far-left activists unhappy with the party’s support for Israel during the 2024 election.

Michigan Democrats unanimously elected former state Sen. Curtis Hertel as the party’s new statewide chair last weekend, after his only competitor, Al Williams, faced criticism for antisemitic remarks and dropped out. Hertel’s victory earned praise from Democratic Majority for Israel, which had called for Williams to withdraw.

“We’re confident Mr. Hertel is the right person to unify and lead Michigan’s Democratic Party into the future,” Mark Mellman, DMFI’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

But Hind Omar, Hertel’s pick for corresponding secretary, threatened last year to break with the Democratic Party over former President Joe Biden and presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris’ support of Israel.

“Where the Democratic Party used to be the soft place that we would land, it has now become the aggression against our community,” Omar, a diversity, equity and inclusion strategist in Ann Arbor, told CBS News days before the 2024 presidential election. “We showed up for Biden. And this experience during his administration under his watch has been a betrayal.”

Omar ultimately did vote for Harris, she told Jewish Insider. Mellman said Tuesday that he is “confident the MDP will continue to be a pro-Israel party under Chairman Hertel’s leadership.”

Omar is the first Palestinian-American to serve on the executive board of the Michigan Democratic Party. Days after being appointed to the secretary role, she shared a post on Facebook that appeared to make light of Hamas’ treatment of Israeli hostages.
Magistrate and Green councillor who shared Hamas video given formal warning
A magistrate and Green Party councillor has been given a formal warning for serious misconduct by a judicial watchdog for sharing a Hamas video on social media.

Abdul Malik, a Bristol City councillor and mosque leader, had initially denied sharing a video showing Hamas defending the 7 October massacres and calling Israel “a cancer that should be eradicated” ahead of last year’s local elections.

Green Party leader Carla Denyer said she was “satisfied” Malik’s case had been dealt with last year as she accepted claims he had not shared an 18-minute video of a Hamas press conference.

The footage showed a spokesman for the terror group described the 7 October massacre as a “supremely defensive act” that “targeted only Israeli military bases and compounds”, and said Israel was an “an animal state”.

After Malik was elected last year, Bristol Green Party made him their budget and finance chair and placed him on their Communities Committee and made him deputy chief whip.

But Tuesday’s finding by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) exposes Malik’s initial explanation to the Green Party about how the Hamas video came to be on his social media feed as false.

The Green candidate’s sharing of video was intially raised with party co-leaders by Lord Mann, the government’s adviser on antisemitism. When shown the screenshot, the party insisted that Malik had not published the post himself.

A party spokesman later apologised, saying Malik was “unwittingly tagged into an offensive post that he assures us he did not himself publish”.

Co-leader Denyer, who had continued to campaign for Malik and appeared on his election leaflets, also told the Guardian that she was “satisfied” his case had been “dealt with.”

But now, the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) has found that Malik had “failed to exercise due care and diligence” and his actions “had a detrimental effect” upon the “reputation of the magistracy”.


High-ranking gamer banned for pro-Israel stance could forge new legal precedent for US Jews
In the fall of 2021, professional gamer Felix Hasson was hiking in the West Bank’s Wadi Qelt, a valley cut through the biblical landscape’s limestone hills between Jerusalem and Jericho.

The Jewish-American Hasson, then a teenager, was listening to Kanye West’s latest album, “Donda,” during the hike.

“In the west bank bumpin carti… i got to introduce these settlements to off the grid,” he posted on Twitter, referring to a song on the album featuring rapper Playboi Carti. (At the time, West, now known as Ye, had not yet posted any antisemitic tirades online.)

The tweet and others would surface more than two years later, after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, getting Hasson banned from several high-level online gaming competitions, according to a federal lawsuit filed in December in New York. Hasson is suing the competitions for excluding him in a case that his legal team hopes will set a legal precedent for other industries — online and off. The case also illustrated the evolving tactics in legal battles over antisemitism and anti-Zionism as both Israel’s advocates and its opponents take to the courts.

Hasson, a 21-year-old from New York, is a professional gamer specializing in Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. He began competing in online tournaments in 2020, and by 2022, was ranked third in Israel while residing there during a gap year.

Playing under the pseudonym T_pot, Hasson was ranked 19th in the world for gamers playing as Terry, one of Smash’s characters.

The lawsuit argues that, although Hasson’s family is from the US, he considers Israel his “ultimate place of national origin” due to his Jewish ethnic and religious identity. That definition would protect Hasson’s Zionism under Title II of the US Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law ensures equality in “public accommodations,” including sports arenas, without discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
The Day That Terrorism Became a Global Spectator Sport
Dec. 7, as most members of the so-called “greatest generation” know, is the day that Franklin Roosevelt declared would “live in infamy” when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, belatedly drawing America into World War II. Similarly, most Americans, even those too young to have seen the Twin Towers collapse or smelled the stench of burning metal and flesh, know that Islamic terrorists changed history on Sept. 11 by killing over 3,000 people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Within Israel and for Jews everywhere, Oct. 7 will long be remembered as the day that Hamas and other Palestinian enthusiasts slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took 251 people hostage in coordinated incursions from Gaza.

What about Sept. 5? That date rings few memory bells, even for Americans who were able to watch television or follow the news in the fall of 1972. Some may dimly recall that on that day eight Palestinian terrorists from the militant Black September group infiltrated the Summer Olympics in Munich, killing two members of Israel’s national athletic team and taking nine others hostage. On Sept. 5, terrorism itself became a spectator sport.

That terrible event has now been rescued from obscurity by Tim Fehlbaum, the Swiss director and cowriter (with Moritz Binder and Alex David) whose film about ABC’s coverage of the attack more than deserves its sole Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a claustrophobic newsroom thriller. The film compresses the 22-hour-long ordeal into a taut, gripping 94 minutes. It not only chronicles an early terrorist milestone, but also explores with skill and subtlety the strengths and failures of broadcast journalism, the still evolving ethics of TV news, and the beginning of a new, harsher era of mass media.

As the film tells us, Sept. 5 was the first time that an act of terrorism was broadcast live around the world. Some 900 million people watched it unfold on TV, a quarter billion more people than those who saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon three years earlier.

The film highlights the constant, enduring journalistic tension between trying to get the story first versus getting it right.

Perhaps the film touched me so deeply because as an aspiring journalist and Olympics addict in college, I was glued to my TV set for the games, the first to be covered live thanks to the invention of satellite technology. Or perhaps it resonated because as a journalist who has focused on terrorism and mass mayhem for much of my career, the film brilliantly recreates the challenges and the ethical quandaries that continue to plague reporters who cover terror—or politics, for that matter. For journalism, as lead actor John Magaro told the London Times, is “one of the few careers where you can get a promotion when people die.”

September 5 is not a sprawling epic about the attack itself, the roots of Palestinian terror, or the morality of Israel’s deterrence cum revenge—as Steven Spielberg attempted in 2005 in his ambitious, but ultimately unconvincing Munich. Nor is it an effort to portray journalists as noble warriors for truth and justice, like Watergate journalists Carl Bernstein’s and Bob Woodward’s characters in All the President’s Men. The late director Alan Pakula’s homage to journalism was a stretch even in 1976, when the film was made and journalists were still widely admired. Today, it would probably be greeted with snickering disbelief.

Instead, Fehlbaum takes us inside ABC’s cramped, smoke-filled control room near the Olympic village in Munich to portray the frenetic nature of a newsroom during a crisis and the intense pressure on newsmen—and they were almost all men back then. What gives the film its power and its poignancy is its honest portrayal of journalists as ordinary people forced to make what were literally life-and-death decisions for those on both sides of the lens in split seconds with little time to reflect on those decisions, or request a do-over. Some of those calls inevitably came to be seen as wrong. But life permits no second takes.
3,000 Jews visit Temple Mount, breaking 1,900-year record for wintery Hebrew month
For the first time since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., more than 3,000 Jews prayed at Judaism’s holiest site during the month of Shevat, the Temple Mount Administration said on Thursday.

The Jewish rights group noted that the Hebrew month of Shevat, which started in late January and ends on Thursday night, is traditionally the least popular time for visits to the site due to rain and cold. However, this year, Shevat saw a 47% increase compared to 2024.

On the occasion of Rosh Chodesh (the new month of) Shevat, which this year fell out on Jan. 30, a record number of 536 Jews went up to the site.

Since the beginning of the Hebrew year on Oct. 2, at least 22,000 Jews have ascended the Mount, the organization stated, adding that the number marked an all-time high and a 20% increase compared to the previous year.

More than 55,000 Jews ascended the Temple Mount during the Hebrew year 5784 (2023-2024), according to the Beyadenu—Returning to the Temple Mount movement, another advocacy organization that monitors Jewish visits to Judaism’s holiest site.

Under a status quo arrangement reached with Jordan in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, non-Muslims may visit the Temple Mount but not pray there.

Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, but the kingdom has a majority Palestinian population and its government has taken an increasingly hostile tone since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of some 1,200 people in southern Israel and during the ensuing war in Gaza.

While Israeli government officials have repeatedly stressed Jerusalem’s commitment to the status quo understanding with Amman, police in recent years have increasingly turned a blind eye to Jewish prayer.
Operation Moses: Celebrating 40 years since mission to rescue Ethiopian Jews
A celebration of four decades since the first Israeli operation to rescue Ethiopian Jews and bring them to the holy land was held by the government in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer praised the Israeli Ethiopian community for their contributions to the country as government officials, community members, and Mossad officials commemorated the 1984 Operation Moses.

Sofer said that Operation Moses was a major asset in immigration to Israel, coming to fruition through the righteousness, sense of responsibility, and creativity of IDF soldiers, Mossad agents, Jewish Agency personnel, and the immigrants themselves.

Following the flight of Ethiopians from famine and the Ethiopian Civil War, almost 8,000 Jews were flown in secret from Sudan to Israel over several weeks.

Hundreds died from attacks and disease over the march of hundreds of kilometers over difficult terrain and conditions.

According to the Immigration Ministry, about 3,073 were rescued in the operation. Many were minors, with a third being children under the age of ten and another quarter being ages 11 to 20. Only 4% of those rescued were over the age of 71 at the time.

Veterans of Operation Moses
According to the Immigration Ministry, 6,617 of the Operation Moses veterans still live in Israel today and have given birth to 7,645 children.

One of the most common names given to the children was that shared by the great Jewish lawgiver and the operation that brought them to Israel. Another popular name was that of their new home -- Israel.

The city with the most Operation Moses migrants was Netanya, followed by Petah Tikvah, Ashkelon, and Hadera.

Netanyahu noted that the celebration came as Ethiopian Israel hostage Avraham Mengistu was freed from over a decade in Hamas captivity.

"Thanks to the military pressure we exerted on Hamas, and with the important support of President ]Donald] Trump, we were able to bring home many hostages, Avraham among them," said Netanyahu.

'We have always believed, we have always stood by our goal. And, thank God, we succeeded. Avraham is with us again, and we will help him and the rest of the hostages returning to Israel to help them rehabilitate and return to life as free people in our country. This is an event of freedom that almost touched this date of the 40th anniversary of 'Operation Moses,' a great event of freedom, of coming out of slavery to redemption."




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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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