March 2025 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, March 31, 2025

03/31 Links Pt2: 60 Minutes: Israeli hostages bond through horror of Hamas captivity; Irish academic warns that anti-Zionism has become her country’s new religion

From Ian:

Schama accuses celebrated writer of ‘sustained moral profantity’ with essay on Israel and the Shoah

Simon Schama has accused the acclaimed author Pankaj Mishra of delivering an “exercise in sustained moral profanity” with an essay on Israel and Gaza that suggested those supporting the actions of the Jewish state had failed to learn the lessons of the Shoah.

In a hard-hitting, and well-received speech, delivered at a London conference on antisemitism, historian and author Schama spoke out against widespread misrepresentation and dilution of Holocaust memory in popular culture.

After citing the more obvious examples of anti-Jewish propagandist in our society, including the rapper Ye, previously known as Kayne West, Schama raised the essay The Shoah After Gaza, published in the London Review of Books by Mishra – who he said had become “a kind of darling of the English intellectual literati left.”

“I think a really low in this process, I mean can you actually sink any lower than this, of actually moving beyond the dilution of Holocaust memory to disqualifying Jews from being the custodians of that memory was reached by Pankaj Mishra in a famous essay he published last year in the London Review of Books.

“He became, as you probably know, the kind of darling of the English intellectual literati left. ”

Schama then said of the essay:”This is an exercise in sustained moral depravity. ”

The author, currently making a new BBC documentary on the Holocaust in an “age of denial”, suggested arguments such as those advanced by Mishara on Israel and Gaza leave a condition in which Jews are only allowed to “say Kaddish in effect for the six million if you come out like Naomi Klein and Judith Butler and Peter Beinhart and you come out as anti-Zionist.”

“So we have a kind of moral selection ramp,” continued Schama, “between those who are allowed to grieve and explain and write and study the Holocaust on condition that you repudiate the Jewish state – 20 percent of whom in its earliest years were Holocaust survivors.”

He added:”You know, sometimes chutzpah, which is a joke for us, can be a kind of ethical crime, as has been committed by Mishra.”

A subsequent book from Mishra was now titled The World After Gaza, Schama noted.

During Monday’s lecture at the London Centre Study of Contemporary Antisemitism conference in central London, Schama discussed attempts to remove the Jewish presence in the modern era from the Anne Frank story, mentioning the lessons to be learned from Dara Horn’s book People Love Dead Jews.

In the film world, Schama also openly criticised the award winning 2023 Jonathan Glazer movie Zone of Interest.

“In the end I became absolutely furious at his own clever self-admiration,” said Schama on Glazer’s film, which focuses on the life of German Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig.

“What you’ll all notice about the Zone of Interest,” Schama said to the audience at his talk, “it was completely Jew free, totally Jew free.”

Ruthie Blum: Methinks the left doth protest too much

In a letter obtained last week by Israel Insider, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Brian Mast (R-Fla.)—the chairs of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, respectively—requested of the Jewish Communal Fund, Middle East Dialogue Network, Movement for Quality Government in Israel, PEF Israel Endowment Funds, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and Blue and White Future that they “produce all documents and information” about dubious practices vis-à-vis Israel.

The March 26 missive to the heads of the above organizations got right to the point in the first paragraph.

“According to reports, the Biden-Harris administration funneled U.S. taxpayer money to certain Israeli entities with the effect of attempting to undermine Israel’s democratically elected government,” it began, with a footnote referencing two JNS articles—one by Caroline Glick and the other by David Isaac.

The former, published Feb. 17, 2023, showed that the left-wing Israeli NGO, the Movement for Quality Government (MQG), had been receiving money from the U.S. State Department. And it was using the cash, among other things, for “democracy education” in Israeli high schools.

As Glick noted, “Since MQG’s primary activity is subverting democracy in Israel by waging lawfare and sowing chaos in a bid to block democratically elected right-wing governments from fulfilling their pledges to voters, it’s fairly clear that when MQG refers to ‘democracy education,’ it doesn’t mean majority rule.”

Isaac’s piece, which appeared on Feb. 18 this year, showed how Elon Musk’s efforts to “expose waste and misuse of funds” by “America’s administrative state” led to the emergence of reports that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had been heavily funding the anti-government judicial-reform protests in Israel.

This, explained Isaac, “led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to … blast what he called the ‘almost inconceivable’ amounts of foreign money that drove the protest movement.”

The letter by Jordan and Mast went on to stress that the “use of federal grants in this manner not only jeopardizes America’s relationship with one of its closest allies, but also undermines core civil liberties protected within the United States and Israel. Additionally, the misuse of federal grant funds may, in some cases, amount to a criminal offense.”

Heidi Bachram: Respite and fight

Last night I went to the most painful art exhibition I have ever been to. It was the opening event for the LCSCA conference on antisemitism and like organiser David Hirsh said, usually such academic spaces are not launched with art. But we are not in usual times.

Curator and artist Mina Kupfermann says she was moved to paint after the horror of October 7. It was an urgent need yet she had no expectation that the paintings would ever leave her studio. No hope that the art world would accept them. She wasn’t wrong. Jewish and Israeli artists have been pushed out and isolated. They have suffered threats, hate and discrimination. Israeli actress Gal Gadot has had to have enhanced security since October 7 due to the explosion in death threats against her. Jewish creatives have found themselves on boycott lists. The worst part is the slow squashing of self and identity as Israeli and Jewish artists censor and silence themselves in order to avoid blacklisting.

The fact that this exhibition happened at all is a miracle. One that occurred within a Jewish community centre. I have little faith that any other gallery would have exhibited it. Another artist Maya Amrami who showed her work was inspired to create it after experiencing severe antisemitism. The anger and frustration at what she went through is palpable.

The third artist was Benzi Brofman who painted victims of October 7 and kidnapped hostages. I know his work well because in December 2023 he created powerful portraits of my husband's cousin Tsachi Idan, alongside Omri Miran who was kidnapped with him from Nahal Oz kibbutz where they both lived. Tsachi and Omri’s wives, Gali and Lishay posed next to them. It was achingly painful an image. As soon as I entered the space, my eyes found it. Or maybe my heart. In that huge place, a familiar face. A smile amongst strangers. Like a private conspiracy, we said hello. Here he was in my home after me just being in his

Soon there were more familiar faces. Friends. Some I hadn’t seen since we had that terrible news and had been to Tsachi’s funeral and shiva. A month ago. A month. How can time move so fast and yet stay silently stuck. Friends, with love and empathy in their eyes and in their words. I get confused sometimes. We spent so long in anxiety and hope, it’s shocking to shift into grief. When they gave condolences I was surprised at why and then I remembered. Tsachi didn’t come back alive.

Oh yes.

It’s a struggle then to know what to say. It’s hard for them too. How can you navigate such horror in a crowded, noisy room with soft jazz and canapés? It’s the right place and the right people but felt entirely wrong. My daughter got overwhelmed at one point and we went to retreat into a darkened, quiet theatre. There, more intimate conversations felt possible. I met the incredible Rachel Moiselle, a gentle and humble warrior. She told me it was so beautifully refreshing to be amongst allies and to just be herself and relax. She hadn’t realised how much she needed it.

03/31 Links Pt1: Stop Ignoring Hamas’s Anti-AmericanismThe silence of the so-called pro-Palestinian crowd; Why Israel must end US military aid; Do Not Be Fooled by the 'Anti-Hamas' Protests

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Stop Ignoring Hamas’s Anti-Americanism

The protests on campus and in major U.S. cities in support of Hamas were explicit about their support for “anticolonialist” actions against the U.S. as well. The people tearing down hostage posters weren’t differentiating between American hostages and others. And these were American institutions being vandalized, occupied and covered in Nazi graffiti on behalf of Hamas’s cheering squad in the U.S.

Now, obviously many of the people ignoring this are doing so purposely, so I can’t say I was surprised to see Glenn Greenwald call Brianna Wu an “Israel loyalist” and a “freakish authoritarian pig” operating on behalf of a “foreign country on the other side of the world that you worship” for supporting the detention of someone the administration claimed was “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.”

Of course, maybe the administration is wrong! Perhaps the suspect was not, in fact, engaging in support of Hamas. But only one type of person believes anything done in America’s name by Americans is actually the result of foreign Jewish puppeteers. Similarly, there is the contention by the Nation’s Jeet Heer that Columbia has appointed as its new acting president Claire Shipman “in order to protect a vicious client state from criticism,” because Shipman apparently attended an AIPAC conference.

The belief that American Jews aren’t actually Americans but constitute a disloyal, foreign subnation is an old idea and not a surprising one to encounter, of course. But we should still point it out when we see it.

The specific problem here is not that anti-Zionist lunatics will behave like anti-Zionist lunatics but that they will shame people with normal, functioning brains into believing Israel is too toxic to support by convincing them that Hamas and anti-Semitism have nothing to do with Americans.

Billy Binion, a smart, fair, and principled writer for Reason magazine, was outraged by a video of ICE detaining a woman who says she never supported Hamas but only wrote an anti-Israel op-ed once. I would expect the traditional libertarian response to be something like: If she is telling the truth, then she did nothing to materially support a proscribed terrorist organization. Instead, Binion posted: “I’ve always considered myself pro-Israel. But if that now means arresting, jailing, and deporting someone whose only ‘crime’ we know of was writing a pro-Palestine op-ed, then count me out.”

Since ICE field agents aren’t taking orders from Jerusalem, I think it’s still safe to consider oneself pro-Israel by this particular, previously unknown standard. This is simply a case of Americans carrying out American policy. But the whole thing is a sign that even good, honest people are getting fooled into thinking that the terror group holding Americans hostage isn’t America’s problem.

Stephen Pollard: The silence of the so-called pro-Palestinian crowd

It's been well remarked that last week’s protests mean there have now been more demonstrations against Hamas inside Gaza than anywhere else in the world. Here in Britain, as elsewhere, the so-called pro-Palestinian marches have rightly been labelled hate marches, from the very first protests on October 9, 2023 in front of the Israeli embassy and the first big march a few days later – planned as the October 7 massacres were still unfolding.

The supposed rationale for these marches, and the routine description of Hamas as “freedom fighters” and “resistance”, has been concern with the human rights of Palestinians in the face of Israeli military action.

But the reaction to the murder of Odai Naser Saadi by Hamas from many of the most prominent supporters of the marches – indeed of the Palestinian cause more generally – should pull the rug from under the feet of anyone who might have been taken in by the marches, who has seen them as a valiant call for peace, and for an end to suffering on all sides. The reality, of course, is the opposite. They are not about Palestinian suffering. They are not about Palestinian rights. They are about the Jews – I’m sorry, I mean the Zionists. Oops, that should be Israel.

Because there has been no reaction that I have been able to trace, on social media or elsewhere. The murder of a Palestinian for no reason other than his objection to being ruled by Hamas has been met with utter silence from the usual suspects of Palestinian human rights defenders. If they have criticised Hamas, they somehow managed to keep it out of the news.

The social media accounts of the likes of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Green Party, Stop the War, the independent “pro-Gaza” MPs, Jeremy Corbyn, Zara Sultana, Francesca Albanese and – of course – Gary Lineker are full of tirades against Israel over the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Some “pro-Palestinian” accounts have even posted statements from clan and tribal elders in Gaza against the anti-Hamas demonstrations, statements that come across as just one step removed from those of captives forced by their captors to say how well they are being treated.

But look for a mention, let alone condemnation, of the death of any of those murdered in recent days by Hamas for taking part in demonstrations against its rule and you will search in vain.

To many of these pro-Palestinian voices, it appears the deaths of Palestinians killed by Hamas are an irrelevance because they do not comply with the ideology that Israel is the evil imperialist coloniser and that those who “resist” Israel are "freedom fighters." The only dead Palestinians that matter to them are those who have been killed by Israel.

To anyone who has been studying the pro-Palestinian movement this will be one of the least surprising revelations ever. The Palestinians have never been anything other than a tool with which to attack Israel as part of a wider campaign. But much of their support is soft, based on the vague idea promoted relentlessly across the media that the Palestinians are the victims of Israeli aggression.

It is likely a vain hope, but maybe, just maybe, this obvious indifference to the murder of Palestinians by Hamas might prompt some re-thinking.

Douglas Murray: Why do the West's most privileged students always side with the terrorists of Hamas against a democracy fighting to survive?

In part three of the Mail's exclusive serialisation of On Democracies And Death Cults, renowned author Douglas Murray asks how some of the most prestigious universities in the West allowed themselves to become tools of Hamas and its plan to blame Israel for the murder of its own citizens.

In June 2024, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) performed a daring and successful rescue mission for four of the Israeli hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023.

They included Noa Argamani, a young woman snatched from the Nova festival. Footage of her being driven off on the back of a Hamas motorcycle, screaming in terror, became one of the formative images of the day.

When the IDF rescued her and the other three hostages they found out one of the people who had been holding them was Abdallah Aljamal. During the war Aljamal had filed many articles about the humanitarian suffering inside Gaza.

One of the news sites that he had contributed to was Al Jazeera. And it turned out that while filing these articles, he had failed to tell his readers that he was holding Israeli hostages in his own home, where they were being tortured daily.

Yet details like this were lost all the time. The world seemed so pleased to be able to throw its attentions onto the conflict in Gaza that any and every claim could be made about Israel's actions.

Almost every time, these were presented in the worst possible light. If anyone pointed out that the death tolls in other conflicts in the 21st century were far larger than Gaza, they were told that they were trying to deflect attention from the latter.

If they pointed out, as did Major John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute, that the IDF had implemented more precautions to prevent civilian deaths than any military in history – far beyond what international law requires – they were dismissed as mouthpieces of the Israelis.

Would a "Death to the Jews" chant be considered protected by the First Amendment?

The First Amendment is quite broad, and a chant like "Death to the Jews!" would likely be protected under it unless it was shouted directly at Jews, or, say, outside a synagogue. If it was done in a crowd, away from Jews, in a style that does not appear to be a direct incitement to kill Jews right now, it would probably not be prosecutable.

The reason I bring this up is because I saw these two stories in American newspapers. The first was from October 1906, from Odessa, and it appears to pass the test of not being direct incitement.

The following wire service story (in the Montreal Gazette February 4, 1907) showed another case where an Odessa mob shouted the same chant - and this time they acted on it.

It sure sounds like the cumulative effect of hearing "Death to the Jews" for months and years prompts mobs to start acting on that desire.

The chants we hear at anti-Zionist rallies, like "There is only one solution, Intifada Revolution" and "We don't want no Zionists here" and "Resistance by any means necessary" literally brainwash people to want to attack Jews.

We have a pretty clear precedent in Odessa.

The chants might be legal. But they must be denounced, loudly and strongly, by every decent human being.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A BIG cover-up is happening in the Arab American University in Jenin - but what are they covering up?

The WSJ article I referenced this morning said:

Palestinians who left Jenin are coming to believe they may not return for months or years. Several large sites have been designated to house them meanwhile, including the Arab-American University campus, 6 miles southeast of Jenin.

Kamal Abu al-Rub, Jenin’s governor, said the school closed sometime after the war in Gaza began, leaving thousands of dormitories vacant. The university didn’t respond to a request for comment. When The Wall Street Journal visited the campus in early March, families were busy moving in and cleaning up dusty units.

Why would a major Palestinian university close? It is not near any IDF activity, and it appears to have closed a while back.

It should be easy to find articles about a university with thousands of students closing. Yet I cannot find any. The university website doesn't say anything, and it still publishes press releases and job postings.

AAUP has two campuses, its main one in Jenin and a separate one in Ramallah. Looking at news articles in Arabic on the site, it seems to me that any articles mentioning Jenin stop fairly suddenly in December 2024.

The silence is eerie. It is easy for a campus not to publish articles, but one would expect students to talk about the hardships they have when their campus closes. Especially the ones who stay in the dormitories. When Israel goes after terrorists on campus, there are always lots of articles about how Israel is blocking Palestinian education, but in this case - almost complete silence.

I found a mere hint of things happening, in one press release from February from the dean of the medical school.

The Dean of the College of Medicine at the Arab American University, Professor Malek Zeben, held a series of meetings with the college's students via Zoom to check on their academic progress and the progress of their educational and clinical training programs, amid the challenges facing the country and the exceptional circumstances facing the region and the university.

The meetings focused on checking on the well-being of students and their families during these difficult circumstances, as well as on the progress of the educational process in general.

Professor Zaben emphasized the importance of ongoing communication between the college and students, appreciating their patience and endurance during these exceptional times. He also highlighted the college's ongoing efforts to ensure the continuity of clinical training for fourth- and fifth-year students at various hospitals. He explained that the training process is proceeding successfully despite the current challenges, thanks to the efforts of the college staff and the university's support.

He added that thanks to these efforts, alternative training locations have been secured, both inside and outside the country, ensuring the safety of students and the continuation of safe training. This is a significant achievement under these circumstances. He urged primary school students to adhere to attending lectures and actively participating in scientific discussions, emphasizing that the College of Medicine's responsibility lies in graduating competent students capable of performing their professional duties to the fullest. He also pointed out the need to maintain students' academic standards and ensure good preparation for final exams.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the dean listened to students' questions and comments about the challenges they face during this period, stressing that the college will work to find solutions to these issues. He also wished all students and their families safety and success, calling for intensified cooperation between students and members of the academic and administrative staff to achieve the desired educational goals.

So we know there are "challenges" and the upper class med school students are doing clinical training at other hospitals, while other students found alternative places to study both in the West Bank and elsewhere, perhaps Jordan. (I found one Facebook post that hinted an AAUP student was not at Al Quds University.)

There is a cover-up going on here. But what exactly are they covering up?

I have a guess, but that is all it is.

In a video I found from December 2023, shortly after October 7, there was a huge banner celebrating terrorism with the faces of former terror leaders and generic masked terrorists and many hundreds of students rallying. Another banner indicates that the rally was a celebration of the anniversary of Hamas' launch.

As I said, the normal university press releases from the Jenin campus ended around December 2024. That happens to be the time that the Palestinian Authority went into Jenin to try to find militants.

Is it possible that they closed the entire school for its pro-Hamas activities?

If that is true, then both the PA and the university would not want this to get into the news. It would be extraordinarily shameful - for the PA to close down a school in the West Bank and for the university to go along with it. One can even imagine threats of arrests or expulsion for students who post about this on social media. The campus apparently just went to remote only mode, and students who need labs or other reasons to be in person are being sent to other campuses.

I cannot think of a better explanation. But whether my theory is true or not, the silence around the closing of a university shows that we cannot assume any degree of freedom of expression from areas under PA control - even in social media.

Notice that of the many journalists stationed in the area, none of them seem curious about an entire university campus closing. And you can be sure that if Israel was responsible, there would be a lot of articles about it.

Only the news that is allowed to be published, is. That is something that should be mentioned in every single story.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Nazi Supersessionism: Annihilating the Jewish ‘Anti-Race'

We have been looking at how various groups view Jews, Judaism, and Israel as a threat to themselves - a threat that drives a pathological desire to annihilate them entirely.

What about the most Jew-hating group of all, the Nazis?

Everyone knows the Nazis were antisemites. But most people don't realize exactly how Nazi philosophy came up with the idea of Jews as uniquely evil and deserving of destruction. Even in the twisted mindset of the Nazis, there is a type of bizarre logic that justifies genocide.

The Nazi view of Jews as a unique, existential threat drew heavily from Social Darwinism, a discredited 19th-century set of ideas that misapplied Charles Darwin’s biological theory of natural selection to human societies and policies. According to those who espoused it, human society follows the same evolutionary principles as biology: competition, survival of the fittest, and natural selection. Social Darwinists claimed that certain individuals, classes, or races were inherently superior to others due to their "evolutionary fitness," and that these differences justified social inequalities. The Nazis distorted these ideas through pseudoscience, viewing Jews not just as sub-human (Untermensch), a term they also applied to Slavs and Roma, but as a uniquely dangerous force requiring total annihilation.

If that is so, then why should the Nazis care about Jews? If they are socially inferior, shouldn’t they go extinct on their own under Social Darwinism’s rules? Why the obsessive need to annihilate Jews entirely, leaving nothing left?

The reason is obvious: if Social Darwinism applies "survival of the fittest" to social groups, then Jews, who have survived the worst that mankind can throw at them, must be the fittest of all. This idea did not sit well with antisemites.

To counter this, early Nazi theorists made up two theories, one biological and one philosophical. Biologically, they portrayed Jews as a parasitic exception to Social Darwinism. In Mein Kampf, Hitler labeled Jews a ‘parasite’ or ‘parasitic race,’ thriving by exploiting their hosts rather than competing naturally.

Based on the idea of the parasite and influence from antisemitic literature, Nazis explained Jewish survival as a form of bloodsucking, especially through usury.

The other more philosophical theory, promoted by Nazi ideologues like Arno Schickedanz, was that while most people on the planet belonged to races, Jews were uniquely the Gegenrasse - the "anti-race," an antithesis of the Aryan race, a destructive force that existed to undermine Aryan civilization. His friend Alfred Rosenberg argued that while most people belonged to races, Jews were a ‘ferment of decomposition,’ existing to undermine Aryan civilization through their culture, science, and ethics. According to this theory, Jewish culture, Jewish science, and Jewish "slave morality" like compassion and the inherent value of every human, were all designed to destroy the Aryan philosophy of a superior race.

They must all be uprooted, physically, culturally, and spiritually, and replaced with the Nazi vision of Aryan supremacy

The Nazis claimed Jews were uniquely dangerous because Jews were said to have operated as a global, coordinated force. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the Nazis heavily promoted, alleged Jews controlled finance, politics, and media worldwide. This conspiracy made Jews an existential threat - unlike "subhuman" Slavs or Roma, who were seen as localized problems, Jews were believed to “infect” Aryans on a global scale.

Other antisemitic philosophies targeted specific aspects of Jewishness—Christian supersessionism attacks Jewish religion, Muslim supersessionism targets Jewish nationhood, and Social Justice supersessionism focuses on Israel’s statehood, all seeking to destroy and replace those elements. Nazi ideology, however, was uniquely annihilationist, targeting every aspect of Jewish existence: their ethnicity, religion, culture, and physical presence, aiming to erase all traces while replacing them with Aryan supremacy. This sickening logic reveals the annihilationist core of antisemitism, helping us understand how other, seemingly more normal, liberal, intellectual, or Westernized groups adopt similar impulses, whether on the Right or Left.

It is inaccurate to think of Nazis as comic book villains or perfect ideals of Hollywood evil. They spent a great deal of effort to build a pseudo-intellectual edifice for their racist and annihilationist theories. Ignoring their theories means allowing their more modern descendants, like the Christian Identity movement or today’s Nazi-inspired white supremacists, to attract new members using these same hateful arguments. The lesson from Nazism isn’t just that man can become unimaginably evil, but that man can intellectualize becoming unimaginably evil.

Right or Left, there is no end to how the human mind can justify the most heinous crimes.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Is Israel finally starting to dismantle "refugee camps" that have turned into terrorist strongholds? Let's hope so!

Wall Street Journal reporters embedded with Israeli troops fighting in Jenin. The report points out that this operation, and similar ones throughout the territories, are qualitatively different from those of the past:

Israel has never tried anything like what it is doing now: clearing the camps entirely. It is part of Israel’s aggressive security posture following the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, actively working inside enemy territory to pre-empt new threats. It also seeks to remedy lessons learned from the war in Gaza, in which Israel’s decision to cede ground allowed Hamas to regroup multiple times in areas where it had already been defeated.
“When I started, there were a lot of operations for two or three days,” said an Israeli military officer stationed in the Jenin area for the past year. “We go inside, kill terrorists, find IEDs and shoot them, and we find weapons.
Once each operation is over, the militants regroup and rearm. Now, the officer said, “We’re trying to make sure they won’t have time to recover.”

The IDF is finding that mosques have been used as sniper positions and they pointed out a camera in a UNRWA school used to monitor their movements to remotely explode IEDs.

Some of the IDF's goals are obvious. As they had done in years past in Gaza camps, they widened narrow streets to enable safer access for soldiers, and they have used massive armored bulldozers to dig up and safely explode IEDs buried in the streets. (I've never seen an NGO or the UN say a negative word about Palestinian militants mining their own streets.)

Some Palestinians think the end game is to destroy the camps altogether:

Palestinian officials and residents worry that Israel has bigger ambitions, using its war against militants as a pretext to do away with the refugee camps completely.

“They are changing the nature and structure of the camp, they are dismantling it,” said Abu al-Rub at his office in Jenin, the city that includes the camp.

The question that no one in the West seems to ask is why are there still "refugee" camps in Palestinian territory 77 years after 1948? By definition, no Palestinian living within the borders of British Mandate Palestine can be a refugee. The most you can say is that they were internally displaced persons in 1948, and no legal scholar on the planet would ever say that the status of IDP's remains for generations.

Hammad Jamal gives the answer.

“These camps are symbolic of our right to return,” said Hammad Jamal, who leads a committee providing basic services to the camp. “As long as they exist, they are a daily reminder that this issue is still unresolved.”

Exactly. They use their own people's misery to be unwitting and unwilling symbols. The Palestinian Authority could have built inexpensive and dignified housing for every resident of every camp over the past twenty years, and the world would have gladly funded that. But the camps aren't needed for shelter - they are needed to keep the false issue of "right to return" alive. They are proof that the Palestinians do not want their own state in the territories for their people but they want to destroy Israel by keeping millions of people in "refugee" status, teaching them that they will "return" one day to places they never lived.

The families of the camp are relocating to Arab American University dorms. The main campus in Jenin has been closed for unclear reasons - their webpages and social media accounts are silent about any closure, and their Ramallah campus remains open. I couldn't find any photos of the dorms themselves but the campuses are beautiful:

Why couldn't the "refugees" be living in gorgeous buildings like these?

Because everything is political.

Israel dismantling the camps would be the best thing for peace. And the best thing for Palestinians, too.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Mainstream Arab newspaper accuses Jews of lying - by lying about Jews

Al Quds al Arabi, considered a serious, independent UK-based pan-Arab newspaper, has an article called "Lies spread by the Zionist and Western media about Palestine."

Here's one of those supposed lies:

In 1903, the Edison Company, funded by the Jewish Agency, dispatched a cameraman to Palestine to produce short films that would reinforce the concept of "a land without a people for a people without a land." These films depicted the Arabs in Palestine as Bedouin groups who had come from the Arabian Peninsula and who must return to it. Thus, American and European world cinema became the spearhead in directing public opinion toward the Arab-Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

There's only one problem. The Edison company never sent anyone to make films in Palestine. The Jewish Agency did not come into existence until 1929.

There are a few short film clips done in Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, usually only a few seconds showing things like Jaffa Gate (1897):

The article also claims that Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" was Zionist propaganda:

In 1940, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator was released, embracing the plight of Jews as a marginalized, persecuted community with a right to exist in their homeland.

That classic move said nothing about Zionism. But it was sympathetic to Jews, which seems to be the real issue for the writer, who goes on to say:

In general, Zionist and pro-Zionist Western media have succeeded in changing the Western mental image of the Jew, who was traditionally associated with cunning, greed, lying, deception, intrigue, and conspiracies. They have portrayed the Jew as a peaceful, docile person who desires the right to life, like all human beings.

Awful, isn't it?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/30 Links: Israel: an anti-colonial triumph; Understanding the Arabs' Religious War Against the Jews; BBC refused antisemitism training

From Ian:

Israel: an anti-colonial triumph

By early 1948, the catastrophe that was about to overtake the Arabs of Palestine was coming into view. Jordan’s prime minister, Tawfik Abu al-Huda, warned Britain’s foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, in the spring of 1948 that while ‘the Jews had prepared a government which would be able to take power as soon as the mandate was terminated… the Palestine Arabs had made no preparations to govern themselves’. Huda told Bevin that the Jordanian Arab Legion, an army built up as a local militia of the British under lieutenant general Glubb, and part of the Arab Liberation Army, would cross over into Palestine and ‘occupy that part of Palestine awarded to the Arabs’. Bevin replied that ‘it seems the obvious thing to do’, but urged the Arab Legion ‘not to invade the areas allotted to the Jews’. In effect, the British foreign secretary was giving his blessing to Arab States to invade Palestine as Britain left, so as to ensure the province remained divided. Britain’s ambassador to Jordan, Alec Kirkbride, said that Jordan annexing Nablus and Hebron ‘was the logical solution’ (8).

The Arab Legion planned to attack the Jews once the British had left. Britain resupplied the Arab Legion’s munitions just before the attack on the Jews, with eight 25-pounder guns arriving in February 1948. ‘Each battery was commanded by a British officer’, joining those already seconded or directly serving in the Arab Legion, like brigadier Norman Lash and Glubb himself. Glubb thought that ‘the British regular officers were the keystone of the whole edifice’ (9). Britain had also armed the Egyptian and Iraqi forces and used British facilities to refuel the Egyptian aircraft, but with less enthusiasm (10). Britain also flew reconnaissance flights and risked being drawn into the war directly when the Israeli air force downed a Mosquito aircraft over Israel in November 1948. By contrast, the Zionists could only get their guns from the Soviet bloc – and even then, not directly from the USSR, but surreptitiously supplied through Czechoslovakia, or on the black market.

When the Arab Liberation Army attacked in May 1948, Glubb’s Arab Legion had a decisive impact on the fighting. On 18 May, the legion entered Jerusalem where 100,000 Jews were fighting their Arab neighbours. By 28 May, the Jews had surrendered their foothold in the Old Town. The rest of the Arab Liberation Army, including the Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian forces, fought badly. ‘Seven Arab States declare war in Palestine, stop impotent before it, and then turn on their heels’, wrote Syrian diplomat Constantine Zurayk, in The Meaning of the Disaster (11).

The Arab Legion itself was undone when the British government, under pressure from the United Nations and the United States, ordered British officers seconded to it to step down. Renewed fighting saw the Israel Defence Forces, formed in 1948, reverse the Arab Legion’s successes in Judea and Samaria (as the West Bank was known then). When the fighting stopped in March 1949, Israel held more territory than had been allotted it in either the British or the UN partition plans, including West Jerusalem – but not the Old City, where Jews were excluded and synagogues desecrated, until Israel took it back in 1967.

Before 1948, Zionist attacks had mostly been directed against the British Army and police. After the Arab Liberation Army attacks in 1948, the Israelis succumbed to sectarianism, attacking Arab villages and driving out their residents. This was the peak of the Nakba, the disaster. At Deir Yassin, the worst massacre, Irgun guerillas killed 140 villagers. At the time, it was thought 400,000 were expelled. By 1956 the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) put the figure at 900,000.

Today, the estimates are even higher. The Nakba has been foregrounded by Palestinian nationalists and their supporters over the past couple of decades, a self-conscious attempt to both demonise Israel and to rival the Jewish State’s commemoration of the Holocaust. The disaster of 1948 is used primarily to suggest that Israel was founded in an act of violence against the Arabs of Palestine.

Yet, despite the frequent invocation of the Nakba, it is clearly not very well understood. The reason that there is an Israel and not a Palestine is not that Jews defeated the Palestinians. It is because the Jews defeated the British Empire in a war of national liberation, between 1946 and 1947. It was British imperialism that faced disaster in 1947, but it was the Arabs who paid for it in 1948, when Britain backed the Arabs, with arms and British officers.

Anti-Israel activists may today try to present Israel as a ‘settler-colonial state’. But its founding, forged in the heat of anti-colonial struggle, shows it was anything but.

Understanding the Arabs' Religious War Against the Jews

Idit Bar, 59, an Israeli expert on Arab society and culture, explained in an interview how the understanding of "two states" is totally different in Arabic and in the West.

"The Arabs repeatedly insist that for them, there can never be a Jewish state in the Middle East. When they speak of two states, they mean one Arab state that is cleansed of Jews, next to a state that is in no way a Jewish state. And they want to send the refugees to that state to change it into one with an Arab majority. This is not my analysis; this is what they say explicitly. We just need to listen."

"Take, for example, the slogan "from the river to the sea." That sounds nice in English, but the exact translation from the original source is 'Palestine is Arab from the river to the sea.' It's a declaration of ethnic cleansing. What is "Free Palestine"? Freed from what? From the Jews."

"When you pay attention to the Koranic verses that their leaders cite in their speeches, you can understand the cultural connection....The ideological aspect overcomes any other benefits. There is a goal and a vision, and that's the direction they are following."

"We're not willing to understand the nature of a religious war that's wrapped inside a political war. But we need to understand that Muslim fanatics cannot accept the fact that the Jew, who was always humiliated and discriminated against in Arab lands, has established a state in the heart of the Middle East. That is something they are not prepared to accept."

"Let it be clear: if elections were held in Judea and Samaria today, Hamas would win, and we need to act accordingly....Israel needs to open its eyes and recognize that they want to kill us and we need to prepare for that....The destruction in Gaza does not deter Hamas in Judea and Samaria, nor the local residents. They are prepared for any hardship, even to live in tents, as long as they can destroy us."

What convinced Douglas Murray that Hamas is a death cult

In this extract from Douglas Murray’s new book, the renowned author describes how Hamas cynically ignores the laws of war, using civilians as human shields and even stashing its weapons in children’s bedrooms.

As they accuse Israel of 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza and scream for Intifada – holy war – pro-Palestine protesters have been heard to suggest that the young people whom Hamas terrorists so viciously slaughtered at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023 deserved it because 'the place where Zionists decided to rave was next to a concentration camp' – i.e. Gaza. Accusing the Jews of setting up a concentration camp has been a constant claim against the Jewish state ever since it withdrew from the Strip in 2005. But it is an absurdity.

When Israel handed over Gaza, its population was around 1.3 million. By 2023 it was more than 2 million. That would make it the first concentration camp in history in which the population actually grew. There was no population boom in Auschwitz in the 1940s.

So why the claim? It was for the same reason that Israel is so glibly accused of being 'Nazi-like' in its actions – to wound and hurt the Jewish state as deeply as possible by smearing it with the most powerful terms in Jewish history.

The 'concentration camp' claim was supposedly based on the fact that Israel imposed carefully controlled border checks on Gaza and that supplies were sometimes unfairly kept out. But these were necessary precautions because, from the very start of Hamas taking full control of Gaza, it was stockpiling weapons to attack Israel, bringing them in under the guise of food and provisions.

Any and all trade was a means to transport weapons or anything else that would further Hamas's war aims. When, for example, the Israeli authorities tried to crack down on building supplies entering the Strip, knowing that much of this material was being used by Hamas to build its tunnel network, they were condemned by the international community and accused of denying the people of Gaza their rights.

But the truth is that while Hamas's paymasters and mouthpieces in the region and across the West were proclaiming that Gaza was a concentration camp, it was a place that much of the rest of the region would envy.

Even in 2010, while Western media talked about Gaza as constituting one great humanitarian catastrophe, it boasted fancy restaurants, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and shopping malls. The Lonely Planet guidebook noted that at the Roots Club in Gaza you could 'dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu'.

Reconstruction was under way thanks to input from Qatar. In 2020, a Hamas leader acknowledged publicly that people who came to Gaza could not believe that this was Gaza, because it was so beautiful, with promenades and restaurants and so forth.

Marx’s Supersessionist Hate: Socialism’s War on Jews from Marx to Today

(This is a continuation of my series on supersessionism as a defining feature of antisemitism.)

In On the Jewish Question (1843), Karl Marx made his antisemitism quite clear, with passages like "What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.” But the essay also shows his desire to rid the world of the Jewish people as a people and Jewish ideas altogether, saying, “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism."

Marx was not merely an antisemite—he saw Jews and Judaism as a direct refutation of his theories, a threat to his entire worldview.

In his article "The Russian Loan" in the New York Daily Tribune January 4, 1856, he writes, "But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is timely and expedient to expose and stigmatize their organization." He wants to target Jews because Jews - not just Jewish bankers, but Jews - are a threat to his entire worldview.

Yet Marx knew quite well that the Jews were not born bourgeois. The Jewish bankers he hated started off as workers and small businesspeople at best, and worked themselves up to become bankers. In Marxist theory, class mobility was rare and workers under capitalism could only aspire to become "petty bourgeoisie" like shopkeepers. The very Jewish success that he attacks in this article undermine his entire theory at its core.

This is not the only way that Judaism is a direct challenge to Marxist principles. To Marx, morality is shaped purely by economic systems, while in Judaism, morality is independent of class or materialism. To Marx, individuals are shaped by their class and economic conditions and have no real free will; in Judaism, free will is foundational. To Marx, all people are defined by their class - proletariat or bourgeoisie; European Jews not only transcended that simplistic buttonholing but also Judaism is centered on both the heights Jews can achieve both as individuals and as a Chosen People, with their class completely irrelevant.

This is the origin of socialist supersessionism, but it is hardly the entire story. Marxist and socialist hate extended to Zionism and Israel.

Israel was heavily socialist when it was founded. The Labor Party dominated politics, and social programs were (and are) an important part of the fabric of Israeli life. The Soviet Union recognized Israel soon after it declared statehood, hoping that it would become a Soviet satellite. Israel showed its Western alignment by 1949, with growing US ties under Truman, prompting a Soviet backlash where the USSR soon became Zionism's most bitter enemy.

One of the ways Israel's success stung most was that it was home to what may be the most successful socialist experiment ever: the kibbutz system. These communal farms soon produced 40% of Israel's agricultural output and were economically viable in the 1940s and 1950s. Contrast this with Soviet experiments in farm collectivization in the 1930s that were massive failures and were (at least) the spark for famines that killed millions.

It was more than just jealousy of Israel's socialist success. The entire reason kibbutzim worked was because they attracted Jews who were not only enthusiastic socialists but also enthusiastic Zionists. They weren't working for the abstract proletariat; they were working for their kibbutzim, for their families, for Israel. They worked together because all Jews are from the same tribe, their fellow workers really were their brothers, not merely comrades. It was Jewish particularism that made kibbutzim work while forced collectivization failed in the Soviet Union. Pride in being part of the Jewish people incentivized the kibbutzniks to work hard; the Soviet system incentivized laziness. As the 1970s-era joke went, don't buy a Soviet Lada car built on a Monday or a Friday because the workers were either hungover or looking forward to drinking - either way, the poor quality of goods created by the centralized economy offered a sharp contrast with the Israeli socialist workers who took pride in their work.

Both the Soviets and Zionists made propaganda posters showing smiling women working on farms. Only the Israeli ones were accurate.

The Soviet hate for Israel grew along with its parallel antisemitism. Defector Ion Mihai Pacepa has detailed how the Soviet KGB created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, drafting its charter in Moscow to frame Palestinians as an oppressed nation needing liberation, a narrative designed to undermine Israel and the West.

After the 1967 victory of Israel over the Soviet-allied Arab states, it went into overdrive, with massive anti-Zionist campaigns not only within the USSR but worldwide. A 1970s London Observer piece claimed Israel ran ‘concentration camps.’ The USSR spearheaded the 1975 UN resolution declaring Zionism as a form of racism. New Left student movements in the West, including groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the US, adopted anti-Zionist stances, often using Soviet propaganda. Faculty in humanities and social sciences, particularly in fields like postcolonial studies, began incorporating these ideas into curricula - by the 1980s, courses at universities like UC Berkeley framed Israel as a settler-colonial state.

These ideas were not confined to the university. Labor unions, human rights NGOs, political movements and the media were all influenced by Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda. Much of today's anti-Israel rhetoric like "apartheid" and "colonialism" comes straight from Soviet propaganda. From the start, this was not mere criticism of Israel: it was a demand to dismantle Israel and turn Zionists into outcasts. The more Israel succeeded - whether in war or in peace, economically or culturally - the more it exposed the flaws in socialist ideals, showing that the "right side of history" was the wrong side.

Violence is very much on the "right side of history" according to the socialists. Marx wanted to see a workers' revolution; when that didn't happen then socialists would just define any attacks on the "imperialists" to be part of their "struggle" as well.

This socialist embrace of violence found a natural ally in Palestinian Marxist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), founded by George Habash in 1967. The PFLP, with significant help from the Soviet Union, embraced terror as its preferred means to achieve its utopian paradise of no Israel. The group mounted infamous attacks like the simultaneous 1970 Dawson's Field hijackings, where the utopian socialist group notably separated the Jews from the other passengers.

The use of terror does not contradict socialism at all. The romanticization of terror continues today with the unbridled glee at Hamas' October 7 attacks, such as the poster at Columbia University comparing the paragliders Hamas used to butcher Jews as "a host of colorful dragonflies."

Zionism proves Marxism wrong. Israel proves Marxism wrong. Jews prove Marxism wrong. Judaism proves Marxism wrong. Even the people the Marxists choose as their heroes prove Marxism wrong.

No wonder today's socialists at expensive Western universities refuse to debate Zionists and instead demand that they want s "Zionist-free" world - a modern echo of Marx’s supersessionist urge to erase Jewish distinctiveness.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Arab love of antisemitic conspiracy theories naturally extends to every corner of the globe.

The Saudi-government-aligned Okaz news agency has an article by Sadaqa Yahya Fadel that adds some anti-Israel angles to the Kennedy assassination that I have never seen before (although I'm sure they didn't make them up:)

The United States has been - and still is - the country most opposed to horizontal nuclear proliferation in the world, even by its friends. In the early 1960s, US intelligence realized that Israel was working to acquire a nuclear weapon. Initially, it tried to prevent it, especially during the term of the late US President John F. Kennedy, who demanded that Israel halt its military nuclear activity. He was assassinated, which many evidences and documents indicate was carried out by Israel, because Kennedy strongly opposed Israel's possession of nuclear weapons.

...Israel has become increasingly involved in the conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of former US President Kennedy on November 22, 1968, in Dallas, Texas, after it was revealed that the main suspect in the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, had visited Israel in 1962.

Some doubt that the official suspect was actually Oswald. A recently published secret document stated that Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's assassin, visited Israel between March 17 and June 7, 1961, suggesting that the two Americans were preparing to carry out the assassination in Israel.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, became president of the United States. He is considered one of the most pro-Israel American presidents. There are hints that Johnson is among the American figures accused of indirect involvement in this crime.

For the record, neither Oswald nor Ruby ever visited Israel.

Just in case you think that this is not antisemitic, but only "anti-Zionist," the article helpfully adds:

All evidence and indications confirm that "Zionism" is a criminal movement, and that the Zionists are not to be trusted. They even conspire against their benefactors and those who do them good. Suffice it to mention that they were expelled from the countries in which they settled due to their treachery, betrayal, and misconduct.

It has been confirmed that the colonial West's sympathy for them and its support for their Israel is not out of love for them, but rather out of spite for the Arabs and Muslims. Zionist America now remains their fortress and refuge, from which they derive most of their power. They have dominated the levers of the American state, and they have become the ones who control America, until further notice. However, they did not hesitate to kill their leader when he revealed some of their harm and opposed him.

Ah, so all those nations in history expelled "Zionists." Got it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From an op-ed in Press Tetouan (Moroccco:)

How strong the shock will be once Israel moves to implement the next stage, which includes tightening the noose on Jordan, violating the sovereignty of Saudi territory, and rapidly penetrating southern Iraq after the final crushing of half of Lebanon, annexing the West Bank, and declaring Gaza unfit for human habitation for a specific period, about which Israel has accurate information.

The shock will affect the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia before others, due to the return of the descendants of Banu Qaynuqa from the descendants of Manashe bin Prophet Joseph bin Prophet Jacob bin Prophet Isaac, who awoke from the ashes of the Zionist Jews to regain control of the most important areas of the Arabian Peninsula, and their brothers in sharing the curse, Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayza, and all those tribes gathered under their banner, the most vile and hateful of Islam and Muslims.

The Prophet Muhammad, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, had previously ordered that they were expelled from Yathrib starting in the year 624 AD...The grudge gnaws at their breath, waiting for any setback for the Muslims to extend their influence and exploit it.... but the Saudi Kingdom, in ways that are no longer hidden, helped that deviant group, now represented by the state of Israel.

… Everyone on earth appreciates that blessed spot and links its status to the gathering of the adherents of Islam, which must be sanctified with the necessary respect, except for the rulers of Saudi Arabia, who have come to see in it the folkloric seasons they have invented, bringing in the most famous foreign artists before the Arabs, to ignite them as a fire of disobedience that devours the sick-hearted, fanatical about imitating the West, even in their debauchery. All that remains is to transfer something resembling the scandalous Rio Brazilian folklore festival to the spaciousness of Riyadh, to complete the removal of its surroundings from the Arab identity, tearing down the curtains of modesty, and distancing oneself from what is committed with respect for the rights of the Muslim human being.

In that alone is evidence of the prostration of some of these rulers to the teachings of the Zionists, wrapped in the inevitability of modernity...

Yeah, I stay up nights scheming how to regain the desert areas Jews lived in during the 7th century.

The psychological projection is off the charts.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/29 Links: Netanyahu tells the full sotry of the War; Douglas Murray: How the West can defeat the evil death cults that murder and maim with glee; Making a Holocaust film for an age of denial

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: How the West can defeat the evil death cults that murder and maim with glee

Here in the West, we are prone to trotting out the same old banalities – that people around the world are the same everywhere and essentially want the same things; that everybody wants to just live in peace and bring up their family in safety.

Yet some people do not. Not because they are born that way but because they have been raised that way.

How can anyone hope to overcome a movement – a people – who welcome death, who glory in death, who worship death? Is it not inevitable that against such a force, a feeble and sybaritic West cannot possibly win?

For almost a quarter of a century, I have heard the taunt of the jihadists. 'We love death more than you love life,' they declare. I heard it from al-Qaeda, from Hamas, from ISIS. From Europe to Afghanistan, several of my friends and colleagues had heard such war cries in their last moments.

And it had always seemed to me not just a nihilistic utterance but one that appeared almost impossible to counter.

This year I finally saw an answer to it. I went into Gaza myself, taken there by the Israeli Defence Force, and saw up close its campaign to defeat Hamas and return the hostages to their homes. Of all the Israeli soldiers I met, none took delight in their task.

They could feel victorious on occasion, proud to have completed a mission and got their unit out alive. But none took a joy or pleasure in the task they had to do. They did it not because they loved death but exactly the opposite – because they love life.

They fought for life. For the survival of their families, their nation, and their people. Even the most secular of them knew that the lifestyle most of us take for granted cannot be taken so by them.

They know they won't have the ability to party in Tel Aviv, fall in love, grow a family, or live a meaningful life unless they are willing to fight for it.

'Choose life' is one of the most important commandments of the Jewish people. It is also one of the fundamental values of the West. They, and all of us, can win in spite of the enemy loving death. Because there is nothing wrong with loving life so much. It is the basis on which civilisation can win.

Simon Schama: Making a Holocaust film for an age of denial

It goes without saying that The Road to Auschwitz has been a profoundly painful film to make. But as an effort to staunch the tide of Holocaust denial and dilution, it has seemed to me a morally urgent task and one which speaks to the raison d’être of public service broadcasting. But another reason why I have presumed to add to the already vast literature, visual and textual, about the most horrifying act of extermination in human history, is that I have wanted to honour the many writers and image-makers who, accepting their own eclipse, refused to resign their witness to oblivion.

So they wrote and drew and photographed and hid that work, hoping that it might see the light of day and lodge in the conscience of posterity. What they wanted was, as one of them, the Polish novelist Gustawa Jarecka, put it, not long before she died with her children on a transport to Treblinka in January 1943, was to create a “trace” that “should be thrown like a stone under the wheel of history in order to stop it. The stone has the weight of our experience which had reached the bottom of human cruelty. It contains the memory of mothers mad with grief after losing their children, a memory of the cry of children who were carried to their death without coats, in their summer clothes, barefoot and walked crying, unaware of the horror that was happening to them, a memory of despair of old mothers and fathers who had to be abandoned by adult children and the stone silence of a dead city once a sentence on 300,000 people was implemented.”

All that I meant to do with this film is to ensure that Jarecka’s stone is not dislodged; that history’s wheel not move on, indifferent to this ultimate calamity and the millions it consumed.

‘Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz’, April 7, 9pm, BBC2 and iPlayer in the UK and April 22 on PBS in the US

When Charities Betray America: How “Pro-Palestinian” Protest Groups Promote Anti-Americanism

These findings reinforce the conclusions of Marching Towards Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Movement, a study published by the Capital Research Center in October 2024. The study identified 150 pro-terrorism groups behind the nationwide protests and warned of increasing militancy, particularly targeting law enforcement and perceived “Zionist” targets.

The term “pro-Palestinian” is put inside quotation marks because that is how the groups in question define themselves. We do not concede that such extremist groups are genuinely pursuing an agenda that would benefit innocent Palestinians.

The broadening of the “pro-Palestinian” movement’s agenda to include siding with Western adversaries in conflicts around the world and advocating for defunding the police indicates the movement has become a permanent presence. It will not fade when issues surrounding Israelis and Palestinians lose prominence.

Instead, it will attempt to preserve and expand its infrastructure by exploiting popular causes and inserting anti-Americanism, hatred of Israel, anti-Semitism, anti-Westernism, and anti-police bigotry into those causes’ narratives. Therefore, the observed radicalization will likely continue into the indefinite future and incite violence, hatred, bigotry, and criminality into other contentious causes. Shockingly, many of the groups and individuals who used the keywords denoting calls for violence or hatred of America or the police are officially “charities” or projects of charities, or they enjoy the benefits of official status as student groups at colleges that are either private charities or government institutions.

Key Findings
During the 15 months following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, the “pro-Palestinian” movement’s use of hateful anti-American and anti-police keywords and phrases rose by 186 percent in comparison to the 15-month period preceding the attacks.
The “pro-Palestinian” movement’s hateful anti-American and anti-police posts following October 7 had over 23 million views on X and TikTok and 4.2 million engagements in the form of comments, likes, and shares on those platforms.
Hateful anti-American and anti-police posts endorsing violence skyrocketed 3,000 percent during the 15 months after the attacks in comparison to the 15 months prior to the attacks, indicating that the movement is rapidly radicalizing.
The “pro-Palestinian” movement’s anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli tropes largely depict Israel as an appendage of a villainized United States. In other words, hatred of Israel is commonly rooted in anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, and anti-capitalism.
A mainstream belief of the “pro-Palestinian” movement is that the United States shares Israel’s illegitimacy because it is a “settler-colonial” state with no right to exist. The movement’s groups and activists frequently state that, just as Israel should be destroyed and replaced by Palestine, the United States and its “colonial borders” should be abolished and replaced by Turtle Island, a mythical land that some Native American traditions claim once encompassed North and Central America.
The movement makes a concerted effort to equate American law enforcement with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or “occupation forces,” as the groups in question often refer to them. Such rhetoric is dangerous because almost all these groups and activists support violent attacks on the Israeli military.
The 78 groups and 30 activists described in Appendixes A and B had the most malicious speech in their posts. Of the groups, nearly half (35), were college chapters of national organizations, which means they receive recognition and likely student fees from private charitable colleges or government-chartered colleges. Two of the groups legally operate as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits, 15 groups have an unknown legal status, and the remaining 26 groups are operating as 501(c)(3) “charities,” either as independent nonprofits or as a project of a sponsoring charity.
Of the 30 activists described in the Appendix B, 19 are either employees of a private or public college or are in the leadership of 501(c)(3) “charities.” All of the charities tied to these activists and groups that support violence or anti-American, anti-police animus may be at risk of adverse legal consequences, including loss of tax-exempt status.