From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
What Happens When You Can’t Simply Arrest the Jews For Defending Themselves?
The morning after Easter Sunday in 1903, Yehiel Pesker went to his shop at the Kishinev market to inspect for damage. The previous day, the early rumblings of a pogrom had unsettled the city. On his way back home, he saw about 200 Jews armed with clubs and even a few guns—the second wave of one of history’s most notorious pogroms would come that day and Jews wanted to be prepared. When the pogromists came there was a standoff, until the police intervened against the Jews and the deadly violence continued.
Although these Jews merely presented a desire to defend themselves should they be attacked, and although this was one brief moment on the second day of a three-day blood-riot that would shock the world, “local antisemites and their sympathizers,” according to historian Steven J. Zipperstein, tried to argue that this was an escalation by the Jews and therefore the victims were really to blame for the pogrom. Elsewhere in town, a nearly 60-year-old Jewish man fought off four attackers, who then spread the rumor that a Jew had murdered Christians. For some, then, a literal blood libel in the middle of an extended massacre was transformed into the origin story of the whole riot.
“In arguments made by defense attorneys at the trials of pogrom-related crimes, Sunday’s rioting was dismissed as a ruckus that would quickly have come to an end… had Jews not overreacted,” writes Zipperstein. “In this version it was the all-but-unprovoked aggression of Jews and subsequent rumors of attacks on a church and the killing of a priest that set in motion the unfortunate but, under the circumstances, understandable violence.”
That all may sound ridiculous, because few pogroms are better known than Kishinev and because it had such a profound effect on history: It shaped the perspectives of important Zionist figures and it alarmed the world, even becoming an element of the civil-rights fight in America as an example of why racial and ethnic minorities needed protection from the state enshrined in law.
But leave out the names of people and places, and you’d be describing the response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre. The Jews had it coming; the attacks were essentially an act of self-defense; it would’ve been a minor event had the Jews not escalated by defending themselves.
Colleges Are Capitulating to the ‘Tentifada’
Harvard is only the latest elite school to promise to consider BDS measures. Colleges to have made that concession include:
Princeton, which will also consider new academic affiliations with Palestinian scholars, students, and institutions, and a new Palestinian studies course.
Northwestern, which has also committed to build a house for Muslim student activities and to fundraise for scholarships for Palestinian undergraduates.
Brown University, which agreed to vote on implementing BDS.
Rutgers, which agreed to accept at least 10 displaced Gazan students and hire additional professors who specialize in Palestinian and Middle Eastern studies.
Johns Hopkins, which will grant amnesty to all student protesters.
University of California, Berkeley, which agreed to ensure that their academic partnerships don’t exhibit anti-Palestinian discrimination, which protesters say is a “pathway to boycott of Israeli university programs.”
University of California, Riverside, which has committed to discontinue business school study programs in Israel. It also promised a “review of Sabra Hummus.”
Alan Dershowitz:
Are the Democrats betraying Israel?
Biden is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He claims to believe that Israel has the right and obligation to destroy Hamas, but at the same time he is denying them the ability to do so. This schizophrenic approach seems motivated more by politics than principle. Biden does not want to lose the growing part of his base that is becoming increasingly anti-Israel. At the same time he wants to maintain the votes of Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel.
More is at stake here than Michigan, with its several hundred thousand Arab and Muslim voters. There is Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Each of which, have numerous pro-Israel voters. The difference is that the anti-Israel voters have nowhere else to go. They won’t vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances. The worst they can do is to stay home, which is unlikely. Many pro-Israel voters, on the other hand, could vote for Trump, who has been strongly pro-Israel.
Pro-Israel voters are becoming deeply disillusioned with the Democratic Party. None of its leaders have been willing to condemn the Squad and its bigoted allies who are knee-jerk anti-Israel zealots. This includes Biden who has praised AOC. It also includes Nancy Pelosi who has posed with and praised the most antisemitic members of the Squad.
And then there is Bernie Sanders, who is among the most anti-Israel officials in the history of our nation. He votes with the hard socialist left on almost every issue relating to Israel. It is becoming harder and harder for pro-Israel voters to align themselves with the Democratic Party, and for good reason.
Until the Obama administration, Israel was generally a bipartisan issue. Obama was the first president to tilt the Democrats away from Israel, especially near the end of his second term. Biden seems determined to turn that tilt into a full-fledged push. We hope he does not do so, but if he does, he will do permanent damage to one of the most important and mutually beneficial alliances in the world today. It may also cost him the election.
From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin:
Biden doomed the Palestinians to another generation of war
Biden and the foreign-policy establishment have had ample opportunities in the last 30 years to try and fail to create a Palestinian state, as well as to see what happens when one allows Islamists to survive rather than to seek their complete defeat. That is not true of Chamberlain, who had not tried and failed at appeasing a totalitarian and antisemitic power before he futilely attempted to bring “peace in our time” to Europe by handing Czechoslovakia over to Hitler.
But Biden and the so-called foreign policy “wise men” drew all the wrong conclusions from their experiences.
They failed to understand that Israel’s goal in Gaza was not an Iraq-style counter-insurgency in which, as Fareed Zakaria wrote recently in The Washington Post, the IDF should have sought to “win the hearts and minds” of Gazans who had cheered the crimes of Oct. 7. Nor were they right when, as The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof claimed, that Israel couldn’t and shouldn’t defeat Hamas or finish them off in Rafah. Both lacked the self-awareness to realize that their advice had been a self-fulfilling prophecy that might ensure Hamas’s survival even when that didn’t have to be so.
If Biden and these foreign-policy pundits had a scrap of honesty, they would have admitted that their willingness to ignore the truth about the Palestinians’ refusal to give up their eliminationist goals was proven over and over in the 1990s by the failure of the Oslo Accords to bring peace. If they had drawn appropriate conclusions from the last three decades of peace processing in which the obstacle has always been Palestinian rejectionism—a lesson that the Trump administration had absorbed and that guided their successful efforts to craft the Abraham 2020 Accords—they might have charted a different course post-Oct. 7. At the very least, it wouldn’t have brought worse results than hamstringing Israel with Hamas now clearly at the apex of Palestinian politics and with the Palestinians believing that the destruction of Gaza notwithstanding, the terrorists have gotten international opinion behind them.
Instead, Biden and the leftist voters whose support he seeks have vindicated Hamas’s belief that no matter what Israel did in response, the terror group—and its cause of destroying Israel and killing its Jewish population—would benefit from the attacks. Indeed, as far as they were concerned, the more Palestinians who were killed in the war the terrorists started, the better. They were counting on international pressure and sympathy for their cause would outweigh any horror felt about the orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction their “soldiers” and other Palestinians who followed in their wake had committed. And that is exactly what has happened.
International Criminal Court seeks arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Monday will seek arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for Hamas leaders.
The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant will include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict,” Karim Khan told CNN‘s Christiane Amanpour.
Charges against Hamas terrorist leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, chief Ismail Haniyeh and Al-Qassam Brigades armed wing head Mohammed Deif will include “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention,” he said.
In a statement published following the CNN interview, Khan’s office said he had “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and Gallant bear criminal responsibility for “war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the northwestern Negev.
However, “the independent judges of the International Criminal Court are the sole arbiters as to whether the necessary standard for the issuance of warrants of arrest has been met,” the statement noted.
A panel of three justices from the ICC’s Pre-Trial Division will now consider Khan’s application for the arrest warrants.
If the court in The Hague greenlights the warrants, it would constitute an “unprecedented antisemitic hate crime,” Netanyahu warned last month after reports surfaced of Khan’s intentions.
“The possibility that they will issue arrest warrants for war crimes against IDF commanders and government leaders is a scandal of historical magnitude,” stated the premier.
“Eighty years after the Holocaust, the international bodies established with the goal of preventing another Holocaust are considering denying the Jewish state its right to defend itself,” he continued.
Netanyahu noted that this marks the first time that a democratic country committed to international law is defending itself from accusations of war crimes while at the same time facing existential threats.
Ebrahim Raisi’s Iran was one of brutal repression
Given his reputation for lethal repression, Raisi’s election as president in 2021, succeeding the more moderate Hassan Rouhani, might seem surprising. But then this was an election in which the Iranian people played only a walk-on role. Iran’s theocrats, through the Guardian Council, effectively decided who was able to stand for president, weeding out any candidates who didn’t subscribe to their hardline Islamist position. As one of his nominal rivals put it, the regime had aligned ‘sun, moon and the heavens to make one particular person the president’. Little wonder the majority of Iranians didn’t bother to vote at all, with turnout reaching a record low of just 49 per cent. Raisi wasn’t so much elected as appointed president by the powers-that-be.
In power, Raisi was everything his line managers could have wished. As Iran strengthened its alliances with Moscow and Beijing, Raisi combined anti-American posturing with anti-Semitic, anti-Israel bile. In 2022, he suggested that more research needs to be undertaken to prove that the Holocaust really happened, called Israel a ‘false regime’ and declared that ‘the only solution is a Palestinian state from the river to the sea’. Needless to say, within 24 hours of Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October last year, Raisi praised the terrorists for mounting ‘a legitimate defence of the Palestinian nation’. Which is one way to describe the slaughter and rape of hundreds of civilians.
Above all, President Raisi indulged in large-scale repression, eagerly subjecting Iranians to the ever harsher dictates of an Islamist regime. In the summer of 2022, he ordered the authorities to enforce the ‘chastity and hijab’ law. He described the growing numbers of Iranian women who weren’t wearing a veil in public as the ‘corruption’ of ‘Islamic society’. A few months later, Raisi’s crackdown on hijab-less women led to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She was arrested and detained by the morality police for not wearing the veil. Three days later, she died in a hospital in Tehran.
News of Amini’s death prompted outrage across Iran. For weeks and months, young women and men from across the country gathered in the streets to burn hijabs and express their hatred of the ayatollahs. Raisi’s response was entirely in keeping with his record in every public office he had held. He cracked down hard. Hundreds were murdered by security forces. Many more were arrested, tortured and some were executed. All because they wanted more freedom. To think, speak and dress as they – and not the ayatollahs – saw fit.
Raisi was a vicious Islamist apparatchik, one all too willing to repress and murder his own people. Yet what was striking about his presidency is how little outrage it generated among Western progressive circles. They listened to his anti-Semitic spiels. They saw what he was willing to do to his own people, the lengths he was willing to go to force them to adhere to his regime’s intolerant demands. They saw those brave Iranian women and men try to stand up to the de facto Islamist dictatorship after Amini’s death in 2022. Yet aside from a few token gestures, no real solidarity was forthcoming. It’s almost as if brutal repression doesn’t count for as much, if it’s being conducted by one of the West’s implacable enemies.
As we absorb the news of the death of Ebrahim Raisi, we should remember his many victims – and the brave Iranian rebels who continue to risk it all in pursuit of a freer future.
Seth Frantzman:
Raisi set the Middle East aflame but his death will not put out the fire
Iran’s foreign policy manoeuvres during the Raisi era enabled it to knit together closer ties with Russia and China, as well as to get China to broker reconciliation with Saudi Arabia. Raisi also attempted outreach to Egypt this past year.
All this was key to Raisi’s goal of isolating Israel. He wanted to empower Iranian proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as proxies in Iraq and Syria. These groups could be mobilised at a moment’s notice to attack Israel, the US or other countries. Raisi understood that many Arab states were tired of wars and extremism, having faced off against ISIS and been divided during the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Iran preyed on this preference for calm by Arab states.
Raisi and his regime moved systematically to increase Iranian ties with Arab states, while also encouraging the region to become closer to Russia and China. Meanwhile behind the scenes, groups like Hamas were plotting the October 7 attack.
The architecture he put in place will remain now he has gone. Close ties between China, Iran and Russia will continue. Drone exports and Iranian drone and missile threats will increase. Iran’s backing of Hamas has already led to a massive war and Iran’s goal is to keep that war going and keep its proxies attacking Israel. The longer the war drags on, the more Israel will be stuck fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, while Iran can increase its influence in the Gulf, Egypt and other places.
With Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian gone, Iran will fall back on the IRGC which controls much of the country behind the scenes. It is the IRGC that moves drones and weapons to groups like Hezbollah. The fires lit by Raisi that are consuming the region will continue to burn even though he has left the stage.
From Ian:
‘Palestinianism’ – An Ideology of Genocide
Emrah Erken finally elaborated the connection between ‘National Socialism‘, ‘Palestianism‘, and ‘Wokism‘ in the fabrication of the fake-nation “Palestinian”:
“”Palestinian” inventors
- Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the SS, here with Heinrich Himmler. He is considered the inventor of the fake nation of the so-called “Palestinians”. The PLO charter adopted his ideas. He was the doyen and sponsor of the Egyptian terrorist Yasser Arafat
- Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian terrorist described himself as a “Palestinian.” Here with Khomeini. He was instrumental in the founding of the mullahs’ regime’s Revolutionary Guards. Arafat is the inventor of international terrorism.
- Edward W. Said. One of the main inventors of the woke left’s pseudo-scientific, racist, and anti-Western Postcolonial Theory ideology. Edward W. Said was also a supporter of the mullahs’ regime and an advisor to Arafat and is considered an ideologist of Palestinian terror.” (translation Naftali Hirschl)
In reality, we have to deal with Arab Muslims who started under the lead of the PLO to identify themselves as “Palestinians”. The “Palestinians” happen to be – according to the design given by Arafat, Soviet Communism, Nazis, and the Muslim Brotherhood – an antidemocratic antisemitic terrorist against Jews and the State of Israel. But not only: The ‘Palestinian‘ become the fabricated global enemy of freedom, democracy, and capitalism in the name of Allah: The Jihadist and his big business of drugs, slavery, and terrorism.
Even leading “Palestinian” leaders confessed quite frankly: “Palestinian spokesperson Ahmad Shuqeiri told the UN Security Council in 1956 that Palestine was nothing more than southern Syria. The head of the Military Operations Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Zuheir Muhsein, declared on March 31, 1977, “Only for political reasons do we carefully underline our Palestinian identity. …the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there for tactical reasons.” The PLO, in its own Charter or amended Basic Law (article 1), states that Palestine is part of the Arab nation.”
For Arafat, the “Palestinians” were first descendants of the Jeobites, then the Philistines, and finally a special Arab culture that no one had ever heard of before. Other representatives of anti-democratic Islamism see the “Palestinians” as the direct descendants of the Canaanites. There is no scientific evidence for any of these PLO/Fatah claims.
After all, the fact is that neither the Koran nor the Torah speaks of a “Palestinian” people. The “Palestinian” people happen to be unknown in about 4.000 years of history. It is safe to say, they never existed.
From this, we can derive that the “Palestinian” is neither a people, a nation nor a religion. The “Palestinian” is a fabricated ideology whose sole purpose and aim is to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jewish people.
Now, let us come back to my introductory argument which now falls into place:
An ideology finally can be forbidden on legal grounds such as for example ‘National Socialism’ is forbidden in Germany. The carrier of the ideology is the ‘Palestinian’. The ‘Palestinian’ does not represent a people, a nation, or a religion, but simply is a carrier of an ideology: The antisemitic and antidemocratic ideology of ‘Palestinianism’.
Like, to give an example, the ‘Socialist’. He is the carrier of the ideology of ‘Socialism’, but the ‘Socialist’ is neither a people, a nation nor a religion. The same holds true for the ‘Communist’ etc. I am sure you caught the idea.
Conclusion: ‘Palestinianism’ must be forbidden as an ideology of genocide where the main genocidal ideologies of the world found a synthesis: Communism, National Socialism, and Jihad/Muslim Brotherhood. If we speak of ‘Palestinians‘ we are not speaking about a people, a nation, or religion. We speak about the representative of a deadly, genocidal ideology.
Salman Rushdie: If there was a Palestinian state it’d ‘Taliban-like,’ ruled by Hamas
Salman Rushdie, the British-American author who narrowly survived an attempt on his life in 2022 by a suspected Islamist radical, said Sunday that if a Palestinian state were established today, it would be “a Taliban-like state” governed by Hamas.
The Indian-born novelist criticized anti-Israel student protests, saying in an interview with German tabloid Bild that it was “strange” that progressive youth would support a “fascist terrorist group” like Hamas.
Noting the protesters’ demand “to liberate Palestine,” Rushdie says he’s long supported a Palestinian state but warned it would become an authoritarian Islamist regime like Afghanistan.
“But if there were a Palestinian state now, it would be run by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state. A satellite state of Iran. Is this what the progressive movements of the Western Left want to create?” he said.
Rushdie said he understood the protests as an emotional reaction to Palestinian deaths, and that “any normal person can only be shocked by what is happening in Gaza right now.”
“That’s okay. But when it slides into antisemitism and sometimes even support for Hamas, then it becomes problematic,” he said, adding that he thought protesters should at least hold the terror group responsible for the war too.
“It all started with them,” he said, in an apparent reference to Hamas’s October 7 massacre that started the war, when terrorists rampaged through southern communities, slaughtering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 252 hostages to Gaza.
Dave Rich:
The 7 October Hamas attack opened a space – and antisemitism filled it. British Jews are living with the consequences
This is not where Jews want to be, with this ancient hatred that ought to reside only in history books making headlines every week. A UK home secretary – who accused the police of handling pro-Palestinian protests too leniently - and mealy mouthed university presidents in the US – who seemed unable to unreservedly condemn those on campus who call for the genocide of Jews - lost their jobs in the throes of it. Political and media rows rage for days because of it. Past generations of British Jews have traditionally stayed well below the parapet, getting on with life in a very British way. Now it feels like we are permanently under the microscope.
This is not only a problem on the left, or just about Israel. Last month, a teenage neo-Nazi was convicted of planning to bomb a synagogue in Brighton. Elon Musk described as “the actual truth” the far-right conspiracy theory that Jews incite hatred against white people. Activists with huge online followings get millions of views for social media posts that would not be out of place in the Nazi propaganda rag Der Stürmer. When this much antisemitism is in the air, it’s hard not to breathe it in.
Why this happens demands a much broader answer. Many of the most common anti-Jewish myths and stereotypes – the association with money and power, of inhumane cruelty and blood lust, the belief that Jews kill children for fun or religion – are centuries old. Together, they offer a way of interpreting our world that depicts Jews as the antithesis, and the main threat, to whatever society deems to be good, moral and humane.
Given this history, it should not surprise us that a protest movement that treats the world’s only Jewish state as a transgressor of all moral and human norms attracts some people who do not like Jews. All those placards alleging a “Palestinian Holocaust”, the “Gaza” graffiti on a sign attached to the railings of the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, “SS IDF” daubed in red paint on my late parents’ synagogue: this particular slander is the latest version of the same old charge that frames Jews as a demonic presence that pollutes our world. Those who were once condemned as Christ-killers are now cursed as genocidal Nazis.
Jews know all of this, but it seems that everyone else has forgotten it. Like hikers following a well-trodden trail across unfamiliar terrain, most people who fall for these ideas are not cranks or fools: they are just part of our world where these assumptions and myths about Jews are woven into the fabric. Nor do you need to wander to the wildest fringes to find them: they reside in Shakespeare, Chaucer and Voltaire. There is the writings of Henry Ford. Or, for that matter, the comments of Kanye West (who talked of “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and praised Hitler, before later offering an apology). Antisemitism is the product of some of history’s finest minds and most talented creators. No wonder it proves so popular and enduring.
There is a well-worn metaphor that Jews are the canary in the coalmine, with antisemitism an early indicator of invisible problems in society. I’m not a fan of this metaphor because it presumes the canary is expendable. Nevertheless, it reflects a deeper truth. Antisemitism has a fluid quality, filling whatever space is opened to it, seeping into the cracks and widening them further. It has dominated conversation among British Jews since 7 October to an unprecedented extent – but really, it is everyone else who needs to think about what it means.
Admitting Gazan refugees would be proof that Britain has a death wish
These MPs are advocating a scheme for Palestinians similar to the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship programme introduced in 2022. But it’s not a fair comparison. We took in Ukrainians in part because we have a security agreement with Ukraine and can be fairly certain that none of those fleeing the Russian invasion are terrorists.
Sadly the same cannot be said for occupants of a country run by Hamas. Regardless of their medical – or other – qualifications, we have no idea how many Gazans support their murdering, raping masters, or how many have been further radicalised by war.
It would surely be better if these Labour MPs focused on our own problems, without burdening Britain yet further with someone else’s. They could also be lobbying other countries in the Middle East to give Palestinians the help they need. The likes of Egypt have been reticent to open their borders.
It is also worth noting that a Palestinian student has already had her visa revoked after saying she was “full of joy” after the October 7 attacks. Dana Abuqamar, 19, a law student at the University of Manchester, said that she was “proud that Palestinian resistance has come to this point” after the atrocities. It would be naive to believe that the average Palestinian wishing to come to the UK thinks much differently.
From Ian:
Who benefits from the destabilization of the US?
No organization has done more to dismantle America as it is presently constituted than BLM. And to the surprise of no one paying attention, BLM chapters were an early and enthusiastic supporter of Hamas’s terroristic and orgiastic attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Nor should it be surprising that the fiscal sponsors of the groups organizing today’s campus protests, such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Samidoun, are also philosophical and even fiscal backers of the different BLM entities.
But U.S. enemies supporting and benefiting from the street mayhem are not all domestic. China, America’s rising 21st-century adversary, and Cuba, whose sclerotic revolutionary rulers have been consumed with anti-American resentment for more than six decades, are two communist outposts implicated in the protests.
A new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute analyzed “the activities and foreign connections” of the Shut It Down for Palestine movement, “an anti-capitalist, anti-police, and anti-government protest movement that emerged after October 7,” the day of the Hamas massacre in Israel. Organizations “operating under the SID4P umbrella are members of the ‘Singham Network’ donor portfolio.”
That network is tied to Neville Roy Singham, a half Cuban, half Sri Lankan tech entrepreneur who was born in the U.S. and resides in Shanghai. A former member of radical Marxist groups, he sold his software company for $785 million in 2017 and now donates generously to Marxist causes.
Various publications, from the New York Times to the Free Press, say he has close connections to the Chinese Communist Party — something Singham denies.
But the NCRI report says that three of the Singham Network’s affiliates — the People’s Forum, the International People’s Assembly, and the ANSWER coalition — “serve as the conduit through which CCP-affiliated entities have effectively co-opted pro-Palestinian activism in the U.S., advancing a broader anti-American, anti-democratic, and anti-capitalist agenda.”
One of the leaders of the People’s Forum, the Dominican Republic-born Manolo De Los Santos, has received training in Cuba and meets regularly with the regime’s nominal president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, writes Mary O’Grady at the Wall Street Journal.
De Los Santos gave a rousing speech to more than 100 “masked and keffiyeh-clad activists” at the People’s Forum Manhattan office hours before they headed to Columbia to take over Hamilton Hall, according to Washington Free Beacon reporter Joseph Simonson, who attended via Zoom. De Los Santos urged the demonstrators to “give Joe Biden a hot summer” and “make it untenable for the politics of usual to take place in this country.”
The activists were then trained on “new methods of resistance” in a breakout session. “A few hours later, activists smashed the windows of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside,” noted Simonson.
We are constantly reminded that peaceful protests are constitutionally protected speech. But we should be equally reminded to ask of those subverting our peace and undermining our institutions: “Cui bono?” It’s not people who wish us well.
How Hamas became radical chic
Dostoevsky maintained that the suffering of Russian peasants before the elimination of serfdom exceeded any misery the Jews had ever experienced. His elevation of the Russians and demotion of the Jews reflects the zero-sum logic of the victimisation sweepstakes, in which every winner entails a loser, every plus a minus. Identity politics involves a similar logic. The theory of intersectionality recycles Marx’s idea that all forms of injustice are systemically interconnected. This means that no single category of oppression can be eliminated unless all are. And as with capitalists and the proletariat, opposed groups epitomise both injustice and its antithesis, sacrificial suffering in the cause of human liberation. A popular diagram explaining intersectionality contrasts categories of “Privilege” with those of “Oppression/Resistance” — a phrase that suggests noble opposition to tyrannical injustice. The diagram lists among the privileged those who are “white”, “European”, “credentialed”, “upper and upper-middle class”, “anglophones”, and “light, pale”. Most Jews in the West, where intersectionality originated, are all of these things, while almost all Palestinians are none of them.
This analytical framework binds the people of Israel with the Palestinians in a fateful struggle. Other Western groups (e.g. Episcopalians) are by the measures of intersectionality also highly privileged. But none threaten the Palestinians’ attempt to be seen by Westerners as the new proletariat — the Chosen People of cultural Marxism — as do the Jews, whose ancient claim to divine election has subjected them to endless persecution. This is why Hamas finds it necessary to deny both the Holocaust and the Jews’ historical connection to the land of Israel — a denial echoed in the charge of “settler-colonialism” that is falsely and uniquely level against the Israelis.
With calls to “globalise the intifada” echoing on the campuses of the West, it’s become clear that today’s cultural Marxists are playacting in the only drama they’ve been taught by their radicalised professors. Unburdened by knowledge of the past, unfamiliar with the sacrifices laid by so many on the altar of freedom and ordered liberty, unacquainted with any but anti-heroes, these anarchists, schooled in the likes of Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, and Frantz Fanon, have learned to regard civilisation as little more than a set of unreasonable constraints on their appetites. Their feverish imaginations transform perpetrators of unspeakable evil, washed not in the blood of the lamb but that of slaughtered Jews, into innocent martyrs in the cause of human liberation.
And it’s not just Hamas that benefits from this demonic alchemy. Marx’s knowledge that he belonged to the “small section of the ruling class [that] cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class”, and that he effectively called the proletariat into being as a revolutionary agent by endowing it with class consciousness, must have considerably assuaged his bourgeois guilt. Hamas’s supporters, including many students and faculty at expensive, elite universities, are buoyed by a similar knowledge as they attempt to launch the “intifada revolution”. (Perhaps some of them, having embraced antisemitic conspiracy theories, figure that if any cabal controls society, it should be them.) Glamping undergraduates who complain that “finger painting for Palestine is cancelled; these people are animals!” — a remark recently overheard at the University of Texas, as police broke up a demonstration — have taken the torch from jihadis and are trying to set the world aflame with it. In doing so, they confirm the truth of Marx’s observation that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”.
Shani Louk’s parents describe seeing daughter’s body 7 months after she was murdered and paraded through Gaza
The parents of Shani Louk, the 23-year-old tattoo artist killed by Hamas and paraded half-naked through Gaza like a trophy, described identifying their daughter’s body seven months after she was murdered by terrorists — hours after her remains were recovered in Rafah by Israeli soldiers.
“The body that we have now is complete and beautiful and looks like she’s alive actually,” said Shani’s father, Nissim Louk, telling The Post Friday that the condition of her body was “a miracle.”
“I think she’d been in one of the tunnels which was very, very cold…that’s why the body is complete and beautiful and the skin is still the same color, you still see the tattoos, it’s amazing,” he told The Post as part of a conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
Shani’s parents expressed relief that their daughter’s remains are back in Israel following the horrific Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel — which included a massacre at the Super Nova music festival Shani was attending.
“The army came and told us that the body of Shani was found and brought back to Israel…we’re happy that she’s back and can bury her properly,” said Shani’s mother Ricarda Louk.
“The body is back, we can bury her. It’s a little bit of relief we know where her body is and that she will be here in Israel buried,” she said, noting that they had been in the process of building a memorial statue in their honor when they learned she was coming home.
“So we feel she is always with us. We feel her. She is happy to come back to Israel and close the circle. I’m happy to have her close by.”
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
Only Israel Wants To End the ‘Forever War’
In 2000, Ehud Barak offered to Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state that included the Gaza Strip. Arafat turned down the offer of statehood. Five years after that, Israel left Gaza unilaterally, after decades of trying to walk away from the Strip. Hamas’s takeover of the Strip soon followed, and it was turned into a large military installation the entire of point of which was to keep Israel from walking away completely.
Attacks from Gaza did not begin in 1967, just as they did not stop after Israel’s disengagement in 2005. Hamas’s attacks have nothing to do with a supposed occupation. Whether or not there are Israeli boots on the ground in the Gaza Strip, there has been and will be war.
Which brings us to the second point: This is already a forever war. And that forever war was declared by Israel’s enemies and is re-declared each time Israel offers to end it. Hamas’s raison d’etre, in fact, is forever war. You can find this out by doing such things as: asking them; reading their statements; reading their essential documents; watching their interviews; opening your eyes; etc.
Hamas does not deny this. Since October 7, Hamas officials have been saying this with even more regularity than they did before. Just one example of about a million: “Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” Khalil al-Hayya, one of Hamas’s top leaders, said in November. “Hamas, the Qassam [brigades] and the resistance woke the world up from its deep sleep and showed that this issue must remain on the table. This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers. It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”
Israel is not “walking into a forever war.” It has spent its 76 years as a state trying to get out of a forever war imposed on it by the enemies of its existence, some of whom, such as the Hamas leaders and soldiers involved in the October 7 attacks, are barbarian war zombies who have no other setting.
If you want to end the forever war against Hamas, you must destroy Hamas. President Biden’s opposition to that is, in essence, opposition to ending the forever war launched against Israel the day of its rebirth as a state. There isn’t another option. The twist here is that Israel is the only actor involved in this drama that wants to end the forever war. No one else seems to be in much of a rush.
One-third of journalists killed in Gaza were affiliated with terrorist groups
One-third of the Palestinian journalists listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists as being killed in the war in Gaza were employed by terrorist groups, Jewish Insider has learned.
The high number of journalists reported by NGOs killed in Gaza has made headlines in the Washington Post, The New York Times and elsewhere, without any mention of their affiliations with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Out of 100 Palestinian journalists on the list on May 17, 33 worked for “Hamas-affiliated” media, such as Al-Aqsa Voice Radio, Al-Quds Al-Youm, Quds News Network and others. Another two worked for Palestinian Islamic Jihad outlets Kan’an and Mithaq Media Foundation.
Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV was named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2010; the outlet employed 13 of those listed by CPJ.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) claims that 105 journalists were killed in Gaza, but only lists 23 of them. Several worked for terrorist organizations’ media outlets, but those affiliations are not listed on the RSF website.
These include Hassouna Salim, the director of the Hamas propaganda arm Quds News; Mohamed Khalifeh, director at Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV; Abdallah Iyad Breis, the lead photographer for the Hamas Education Ministry’s TV channel; and others.
RSF reported that Yasser Mamdouh El-Fady was killed while “reporting on the presence of Israeli tanks near the Al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.” It does not mention that he worked for Islamic Jihad through its Kan’an news agency, which CPJ reported on its list.
CPJ says Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi was shot and killed at the Erez crossing, while RSF said that he was “one of the first reporters to venture out in Gaza on the morning of 7 October.” Other Gazan news photographers who documented Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians have been accused of having foreknowledge of the attack.
Both organizations say that they only included journalists “killed in connection with their work or where there is still some doubt that their death was work-related,” according to CPJ. RSF also noted in a statement to JI that they list journalists “killed in the line of duty or for reasons related to work.”
Alleged Paul Kessler Killer Will Stand Trial
A judge ruled on May 15 that Moorpark resident Loay Alnaji, who faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and battery with serious bodily injury in the death of Jewish man Paul Kessler, will stand trial on the matter.
Alnaji, 51, was present at a pro-Palestinian rally in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 5 in which an altercation occurred, resulting in the 69-year-old Kessler, a pro-Israel counterprotester and Thousand Oaks resident, fell and hit the back of his head; Kessler later succumbed to his injuries. Alnaji, who was arrested nearly two weeks later, is accused of hitting Kessler in the head with a megaphone, which allegedly caused Kessler to fall. Special allegations of greater bodily injuries were added onto the manslaughter and battery charges. Alnaji has plead not guilty to all the charges and is currently out on $50,000 bail.
According to reports from the Thousand Oaks Acorn and Ventura County Star, the ruling came after preliminary hearings were held on May 14 and 15. Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Scientist Jeannine Aguirre testified that she found Kessler’s blood on the rim of the megaphone in question. Ventura County Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Othon Mena testified on May 15 that, in his opinion, abrasions on Kessler’s face were consistent with being struck with the megaphone’s rim and he believes that is ultimately what caused Kessler to fall. Mena is quoted in both the Acorn and the Star as saying that “being struck on the face caused him to fall” and that “there’s an event that occurs where he is struck in the head, and shortly after he falls. I cannot disconnect that event from having at minimum contributed to his falling.”
Alnaji’s attorney, Ron Bamieh, argued in court that Alnaji swung the megaphone at Kessler in self-defense, claiming that Kessler shoved a phone in Alnaji’s face and was recording him, and that Alnaji swung the megaphone in an attempt to keep the phone away from him; a sheriff’s deputy testified that Alnaji had also told her that he swung the megaphone toward Kessler’s phone and that it’s possible he hit Kessler’s hand. Bamieh further claimed that Kessler fell as a result of a medical condition; Mena did acknowledge that Kessler did have a benign brain tumor that might have affected his balance, but was steadfast in his belief that it was being hit in the face with a megaphone that caused Kessler to fall. Police officers testified that they spoke with a couple of witnesses who claimed they saw Alnaji swing at Kessler before Kessler fell. By contrast, Bamieh contended that video evidence shows that Alnaji was far enough away from Kessler at the time of his fall to show that he did not cause the fall and it was more likely a medical condition did. He also claimed that most witnesses were “confused” as to what they saw take place, per the Star.
From Ian:
Lee Smith:
Sinwar in Exchange for Rafah
Israel’s plans for the “Day After” are clearly irrelevant, since Biden and his aides have formulated their own scenario: Hamas “technocrats”—i.e., the leadership in Doha—will constitute the Iranian-backed component in a Palestinian unity government in tandem with the U.S.-backed faction that now rules the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas, therefore, is a pillar of the U.S.-Iran condominium in the Middle East. This includes Lebanon—where Washington funds the army and intelligence services, which are run by Iran’s asset, Hezbollah—as well as Iraq and Syria, where U.S. forces are deployed to protect Iranian allies and proxies from the regional Sunni majority.
If Israel finishes off Hamas, the Biden administration’s efforts to complete Obama’s Middle East security architecture will collapse. From that perspective, Team Biden prefers to sacrifice Sinwar and save Obama’s most important strategic initiative, which aims to override the traditional U.S.-led order of the Middle East and give birth to a new and unholy anatomy, tying America to an anti-American terror-state that embodies Jew hatred.
The problem for Biden is that he is trying to realize a vision that is fundamentally unstable, not to mention insane. Iran is weak, and so are its proxies—or else the White House wouldn’t have to expend so much energy deterring Israel.
It can hardly be lost on any careful reader of this recent White House information operation that the powers now being attributed to Sinwar belong rather to the American government. Sinwar, writes the Times, “has emerged not only as a strong-willed commander but as a shrewd negotiator who has staved off an Israeli battlefield victory while engaging Israeli envoys at the negotiating table.”
But Sinwar hasn’t been near any negotiating tables; he’s been hiding in tunnels inside Gaza. Rather, it is the White House that has prevented an Israeli victory, and it is Biden aides who have thwarted Jerusalem with their diplomatic entreaties to formulate a plan for feeding Palestinians, moving them to safety, and ensuring their political rights with a plan for the “Day After.” Were it not for Biden’s repeated interventions, Hamas might have been destroyed months ago—and many lives on both sides might have been saved.
The most important takeaway from Biden’s offer of Sinwar in exchange for Rafah is that Barack Obama’s vision of a new Middle East, which the Biden administration has insisted on following, entails tying the U.S. not only to an obscurantist anti-American and Jew-hating terror regime but to a military force and its proxy armies that, like U.S. policymakers, can’t win wars. Like his former boss, Biden is intent on saddling America with a deadly loser. Israel’s decision then isn’t just about whether to take Sinwar or forfeit Rafah, but whether to crash Obama’s project, or to let Hamas survive along with the programmatically apocalyptic delusions of its superpower backer.
A military expert on why the US view on Israel’s fight against Hamas is a turning point for the world
Since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, military expert John Spencer has been carefully observing the Israel Defense Forces’ war against the terror organization, including on two trips he made to the Gaza Strip as an embed with the IDF over the winter.
Spencer tells CNN Opinion that he sees a military with the capability to rapidly eviscerate Hamas’ army being held back by the international community. He feels that the US bears some of the responsibility for the devastation in Gaza because of how it’s slowed down and limited Israel’s ability to win the war. It’s a restraint that he says the US hasn’t imposed on its own military campaigns, and it has the effect of increasing Palestinian casualties and suffering by dragging out the fighting.
Spencer makes these assessments after 25 years of service as an infantry soldier, including two combat tours in Iraq. He’s now the chair of urban warfare studies with the Modern War Institute at West Point, and his personal experience and research has been key to his perspective on Israel’s campaign and how it compares to American military operations.
The US pressure on Israel has come to a head in Rafah, the southern Gaza city believed to be Hamas’ last major stronghold and a key point for weapons smuggling across the Egyptian border. But the US is withholding some types of arms that it fears could be used by Israel in Rafah as part of a bid to prevent a major IDF offensive there, even as it is reportedly readying a significant sale of other weapons. The US is warning that a large-scale ground incursion is sure to cause more death and suffering among Gaza civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom have been taking refuge in the city.
Spencer argues that, by taking this approach, the US is inadvertently paving the way for a Hamas victory. “War is hell,” Spencer affirms. But, he notes, war is also deeply engrained in human nature. When democracies are attacked, as they inevitably will be, they must conduct wars in ways that quickly bring victory in order to achieve lasting peace.
Bassam Tawil:
Why the Palestinian Authority Should Not Return to Gaza
The Israeli government, according to reports, is being pressured by the Biden administration to send the money to the PA. This addled and dangerous proposal amounts to expecting the Jews to support the same people who are murdering them. The Biden administration has also been launching a legal and diplomatic offensive to discredit, isolate, and penalize Israel for trying to defend itself against terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, the PA, instead of acknowledging that it is terrified to go back to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, is trying to pressure Israel into accepting the creation of a Palestinian state and releasing the tax revenues. Unbelievably, the PA and the Biden administration apparently want Israel to grant Palestinians a state that will be ruled by the same murders, rapists and kidnappers who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023.
Abbas might one day return to the Gaza Strip – but only when he sees that Hamas has lost all military might and is no longer in control. Meanwhile, he feels safe and secure being in the West Bank, where Israel is in charge of overall security and is fighting against Hamas and other Iran-backed terrorist proxies. He knows that without Israel's security presence in the West Bank, Hamas would have killed him and toppled the PA long ago.
Allowing Hamas to win its war against Israel would delight two countries deeply committed to supporting terrorism. The first is Qatar, an oil-field protected by a US air base, and a country with which President Joe Biden's brother, James, according to court testimony, might reportedly have had business dealings
The second country is Iran, repeatedly designated as the "leading state sponsor of terrorism" and currently racing toward nuclear weapons capability. The Iranian regime – which presently controls four Middle East capitals in addition to its own -- Sanaa, Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad -- wishes to take over the Middle East, as well as oil-and-mineral-rich Sudan. Iran's rulers would undoubtedly not only pave the way for more October 7-style atrocities against Israel, but also other neighbors -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain -- especially if Iran obtains nuclear weapons.
Abbas, fearful of being called a traitor, is reluctant to take action against the terrorists. It might mean his death. Additionally, he is most likely not pursuing the terrorists because they do not directly threaten him or the PA.
If a Palestinian leader does not even have the bravery to condemn the unimaginable Hamas atrocities of October 7, how can one expect him to confront terrorism emanating from his Palestinian Authority?
The Gaza Strip needs moderate and pragmatic leaders who will embark on a process of deradicalizing and reeducating Gazans to lead peaceful, prosperous and constructive lives, freed of subjugation by their leaders, who will finally prepare their people for peace in the region. At the moment, unfortunately, among the Palestinians, no such leaders exist.
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
Buried facts about the Gaza war
The extent to which the political class and the media are burying facts that undermine their poisonous narrative in order to defame and undermine Israel’s war of survival has become simply jaw-dropping.
The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to appease the genocidal and terrorist Iranian regime. It has funneled billions into Tehran’s coffers through sanctions relief. It has refused to effectively respond to repeated Iran-backed attacks on U.S. interests. And it is doing everything it can to prevent Israel from taking action that would damage America’s relationship with the Iranian regime, such as the destruction of Hamas, a vital force in Tehran’s proxy army against Israel and the West.
The American appeasement of Iran has left many people mystified. They should have been paying more attention.
Twelve days before the Oct. 7 pogrom, Jay Solomon reported on the Semafor site that Ariane Tabatabai, chief of staff to the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, was part of an “Iran Experts Initiative” created by senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials to bolster Tehran’s position on global security issues, particularly its nuclear program.
In other words, Tabatabai was an agent of influence for Iran at the heart of the U.S. government and with the highest level of security clearance.
Semafor and the Iranian opposition group Iran International obtained a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails. These revealed that, in 2021, Robert Malley—who was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was removed in June 2023 following a still unexplained “mishandling of classified materials”—had infiltrated Tabatabai into the U.S. State Department to assist him in his negotiations with Iran.
The day Solomon’s article appeared, 31 U.S. Senators wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to express their concern. They wrote: “We find it unconscionable that a senior department official would continue to hold a sensitive position despite her alleged participation in an Iranian government information operation.”
They noted that, in March 2021, shortly after Tabatabai was appointed senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, Iranian dissidents reported her long history of echoing the Iranian regime’s talking points.
That month, Adam Kredo reported in The Washington Free Beacon on these dissidents’ shock at Tabatabai’s appointment. They claimed she parroted the Iranian regime’s position at multiple public appearances and that her father was part of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s inner circle.
In April 2021, several members of the House of Representatives requested a review of Tabatabai’s security clearance. In response, the Biden administration dismissed these claims as “smears and slander.”
Even more astonishingly, Tabatabai runs the office overseeing hostage negotiations. Three weeks after the Oct. 7 pogrom, a reporter asked White House Spokesman John Kirby whether it was appropriate for Tabatabei to be in such a position given the claims made against her. Kirby stalled. Tabatabai is still there.
New York Times Unloads Immense New ‘1619-Project’-Style Attack on Israel
The New York Times has unveiled a new, 1619-Project-style attack on Israel — an error-ridden, overwrought, extensively hyped, self-referential, self-congratulatory, and super-long article.
Like the 1619 Project, this latest article comes with a catchy, short headline: “The Unpunished.”
Like the 1619 Project, this project is a product of the New York Times Magazine.
And like the 1619 Project, it comes with an introduction and display text that overstates and oversimplifies its claims: “How Extremists Took Over Israel” and “After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.” Not to mention: “This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.”
The Times article itself is so mind-numbingly long that the newspaper published a Cliffs-Notes-style summary of it that unfortunately isn’t much help, either.
The summary complains about what it calls a “two-tier situation” in which West Bank Arabs face military law while Israeli citizens there “are treated according to the civil law of the State of Israel.” Yet nearly all countries, including the United States, distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in their legal system. The Times, in all its many words, doesn’t explain why or how the distinctions Israel makes are different or worse or unjustified given the extraordinary and unusual violent terrorist threat the country faces from Arabs opposed to its existence and determined to eradicate the Jewish presence there.
The paper also claims that, “in the West Bank, a new generation of ultranationalists has taken an even more radical turn against the very notion of a democratic Israeli state. Their objective is to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish ‘Jewish rule’: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews.”
That’s a sweeping over-generalization. Jews have prayed since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in ancient times for its rebuilding, speedily and in our days, as part of the messianic redemption. That hasn’t been a threat to anyone.
Survivor of Mao's political purge getting 'PTSD' watching history repeat on college campuses
A survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution says she is experiencing post-traumatic stress witnessing history repeat itself on college campuses as "Marxist hordes" have taken over in anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrations.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lily Tang Williams, who is currently running as a Republican candidate for Congress in New Hampshire's 2nd district, said she fears the country she left is coming back to haunt her again in the United States.
"I sometimes I get nervous, and I feel like I'm having a little bit of PTSD and like I can't sleep well whenever I see the way they're chanting, using drums and us[ing] slogans, [are] humiliating people and have a huge amount of young people…chanting ‘Death to America,’ not just ‘Death to Israel.’ I just feel like, oh my goodness the… Red Guards are in action again," she said.
The Red Guard was a massive student-led, paramilitary social movement in China that was mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966.
Young people were one of the most effective tools Mao exploited to fuel his revolution, Tang Williams said. Most of the young people protesting on college campuses today are "naive" and therefore ripe for manipulation by bad faith actors, she added.
"I think that a lot of students who were protesting on college campuses [are]… confused… Because that's what Mao said, the young people's mind is a blank piece of paper, and you can draw the most beautiful pictures," she said, adding that she thinks they are "naive and easily manipulated… [for] revolution"
From Ian:
Clifford D. May:
Biden turns on Israel
Two days later, Hamas fired more missiles at Kerem Shalom — from a civilian shelter in Gaza. Hamas missiles were fired at the crossing again on May 8, 10, 11 and 12. Israeli military officials assured impatient reporters that the crossing would be reopened as quickly as possible.
If this does not strike you as grotesque, there is no point in reading the rest of this column.
On May 7, President Biden gave a moving speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, recalling the Nazi genocide of the Jewish communities of Europe and vowing “never again.”
The next day, in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Mr. Biden lent encouragement to Hamas leaders, whose goal is to follow the Nazi example by exterminating the only surviving and thriving Jewish community remaining in the Middle East. The atrocities of Oct. 7, they’ve vowed, were merely a foretaste.
For months, Mr. Biden and other Democrats had slammed Republicans — quite rightly — for not passing a bill providing arms to Ukraine and Israel, democratic nations and friends of America under attack by enemies of America. Thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson, the bill finally passed — with overwhelming bipartisan support.
But Mr. Biden told Ms. Burnett that he was holding up the delivery of munitions to Israel and would block further security assistance if Israel launched a major assault on Hamas in Rafah.
“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security,” Mr. Biden equivocated. “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.”
Wars cannot be won on defense alone. Boxers don’t win fights just by blocking punches. “Deterrence by denial” not coupled with “deterrence by punishment” invites enemies to try, try again.
If Israelis must fight terrorists without American support, they will do so. They’ve done it before. Israel exists so that never again will Jews lack the means to stand up to those determined to slaughter their children.
But Israeli leaders can’t focus all their attention — or all their remaining ammunition — on Gaza. Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran like Hamas, continues to fire missiles from Lebanon. Some 80,000 Israelis have been forced from their homes in the north for more than seven months.
And last month, for the first time, Iran’s rulers launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel from Iranian soil. This time, those rockets were prevented from reaching their intended targets. But there will be a next time. The regime’s nuclear weapons program has progressed significantly since Mr. Biden moved into the White House and eased economic sanctions on Tehran.
Israeli leaders must prioritize and sequence as best they can. They agree that neutralizing Hamas’ military capabilities is imperative — and that sooner is better than later.
I can’t imagine them allowing Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, to emerge from the tunnels and declare himself the victor — the jihadi who beat the accursed Jews, the mujahid who humiliated the cowardly Palestinian Authority and the Arab Zionists who joined the hated Abraham Accords.
What I can imagine: The IDF bringing an end to this conflict without a “full-scale offensive” or “major military operation” — terms Biden administration officials have used to describe the military actions they adamantly oppose.
The Gaza Health Ministry Flimflam
Many of the ministry’s advocates in the West defend its figures by arguing that they are, if anything, an undercount. “Doctors say Gaza death toll could be higher than reported,” reads the title of a Washington Post video from earlier this month. An NPR headline from February reported that the death toll had passed 30,000, but “it’s an incomplete count.” Last November, the head of the State Department’s Middle East bureau said the same thing. The common thread in all these arguments is that there are likely numerous bodies trapped under the rubble in Gaza. While it’s impossible to know how many, when the ministry made its admission regarding incomplete data, it also shared information that provides significant insight into the number of missing people.
Gaza’s Government Media Office, which is separate from the Ministry of Health, has consistently reported since late November that there are 7,000 residents of Gaza “missing under the rubble,” of whom nearly 70 percent are women and children. The Media Office has never identified the basis for this estimate, nor has it explained why the number has remained constant for so long. Meanwhile, in January, the ministry introduced a system that enables residents to report the death of their relatives in cases where the body “remained under the rubble or was buried without reaching a hospital.” Relatives can file the reports in person or online.
Initially, the ministry’s statistical digests presented the number of reports filed by relatives as a category of fatalities separate from the main death toll. But on April 1, the ministry revealed that reports filed by relatives are part of the main toll. In effect, the ministry has already adjusted its total to account for missing persons. Spagat writes, “We should dismiss the common claim that, because many of the dead are trapped under rubble or are missing for other reasons, the announced totals are undercounts.” Whereas the Media Office continues to claim 7,000 are missing, relatives have filed 3,160 reports as of April 24. Of those reports, 1,762, or 55.8 percent, are for men ages 18–59, a figure at odds with the contention that nearly 70 percent are women and children.
Another potential adjustment to the ministry’s numbers concerns the number of Palestinian lives lost to rocket fire by Hamas and its allies. The ministry consistently describes its figure as “the cumulative number of martyrs since the beginning of the [Israeli] aggression,” language that could either include or exclude the victims of Palestinian munitions. From the incident at al-Ahli Hospital, we know that one errant rocket can claim scores or even hundreds of lives, even if the ministry exaggerated the number. In November, the IDF estimated that Palestinians had fired 9,500 rockets at Israel during the first month of the war, of which 12 percent, or more than 1,100, “failed and fell short, inside the Gaza Strip”—a rate comparable to that of previous conflicts.
Finally, there is the question of underage fighters, which Hamas has employed in the past. Among casualties under age 18, there is a disproportionate number of males, suggesting involvement in combat. For example, if one sorts the entries from the health ministry’s list of fatalities, there are 225 17-year-old males, compared with 132 females of that age. Among 16-year-olds, there are 226 males to 127 females. The imbalance becomes progressively smaller as age diminishes, with more girls than boys in some age brackets—an outcome consistent with the expectation that teenagers may fight, but younger children rarely will. All together, these data suggest there may be a few hundred underage fighters among the dead, which is enough to raise concerns about the exploitation of children but not enough to have a significant impact on the overall demographics of the casualties.
How Hamas Saved Egypt
Egypt, the self-proclaimed “Umm al-Dunia,” or “Mother of the World,” is increasingly irritated by its diminishing influence in the region. Its officials resent the Gulf’s growing economic and widely perceived political importance in Middle Eastern affairs. Its annoyance is particularly evident at the mere mention of mega-rich Qatar, the Gulf sheikhdom of 2.6 million people, only 300,000 of whom are of Arab origin. Yet Qatar, which hosts Hamas’ political leaders and supports the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot in Gaza, increasingly claims to be the leading negotiator between Israel and Hamas. The UAE, which championed the Abraham Accords recognition of Israel, has also jeopardized Egypt’s role as the Arabs’ main interlocutor with Jerusalem. Egyptians, who take pride in their country’s history and heritage, bristle at the loss of their nation’s diplomatic clout. By reviving its regional profile, Oct. 7 has bestowed another gift on Egypt.
But while Egyptians are disturbed by the Israeli-Hamas war and the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, the country seems increasingly focused on its grave domestic challenges. “Egypt obviously cares about the region, but our priority is building our country,” said Abdel Monem Said Aly, an influential Egyptian analyst.
Whether Egypt will be able to reform the militarized state capitalism that has battered the private sector and redistributed income from the beleaguered middle class to the army remains to be seen. “Sissi will do this because he knows he must,” said one non-American diplomat. “This is Egypt’s last shot to get it right.” But many financial analysts doubt that Sissi has the desire or ability to reign in his fellow generals upon whom his continued rule of Egypt depends.
Sissi may not have to face that choice. With 110 million people living on less than 10% of the land along the Nile, Egypt may well be, as Egyptians repeatedly told me, too big to fail. The reaction of the West and the Gulf Arab states following Oct. 7 gives the Egyptians every reason to believe it’s true.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like in Practice
The progressive masses that march regularly for Israel’s destruction believe the United Kingdom is deserving of precisely the same fate for precisely the same reasons. In fact, they hold the UK uniquely responsible for Israel’s creation and thus see the two states as part of the same holy war. Back in Berkeley as elsewhere in the U.S., the tentifada is organized and run by those who also admire the pluck of the “decolonization begins at home” psychopaths.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (you can’t make this up) isn’t the first in the Bay Area to see trickle-down radicalization, the Jewish News points out: Schools in San Francisco and Oakland and other schools in Berkeley have walked out too. A couple of those walkouts took place just after Hamas’s attacks and well before Israel’s incursion into Gaza, which can only be understood as celebratory of the massacre.
Back in Britain, the police reassure the public that they “do not believe that there is a wider risk to the public connected to this case,” which is no doubt true. But there is a wider risk to the public that has been exposed by this case, and others like it.
For months, dishonest people have argued that the “river to the sea” chant, a variation on a line in the Hamas charter, isn’t necessarily indicative of a desire to carry out a genocide. But even offering the benefit of the doubt, is there a benign reason to gather outside a Jewish preschool and chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at the 4-year-olds inside? There is not. And that is crucial to this discussion: The actions of these demonstrators are indefensible from any angle.
There’s another chant that has been quite popular at the demonstrations and marches in the U.S. as well as those in Britain (and elsewhere): “Globalize the intifada.” Since the intifada refers to a campaign of mass terrorism against Jewish civilians, to globalize it would be to expand the battlefield without changing the goal. Some people try to deny this, but even they do not believe their denial, because it is ridiculous. They are not cheering on individual vision quests or yoga retreats. They are not shouting “have yourself a very merry intifada in the privacy of your own home surrounded by loves ones!”
Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein were in court today because they attempted to globalize the intifada. They heard the calls of the protesters, as others no doubt will. And they didn’t misunderstand.
Genocidal, But Mostly Peaceful
It is no “moral panic” to report that Students for Justice in Palestine, the major student group on campus behind these protests, praised Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel as a “historic win” against “the Zionist enemy,” or that students at protests on elite campuses such as Yale and Princeton and Stanford have proudly displayed Hamas and Hezbollah flags and other terrorist regalia. Nor to note, as the Anti-Defamation League reported and many social-media accounts confirmed, that a Columbia protestor said, “Never forget the 7th of October . . . the 7th of October is about to be every f—king day for you. You ready?” If Michelle Cottle thinks judgments of such actions are “in the eye of the beholder,” her eye does not know how to behold.
What this soft-pedaling of the horrors being spewed on campus has produced is a disastrously incurious media. Consider the question of how the college protests are organized and funded. The encampments that mysteriously sprang up like mushrooms on campuses in a matter of days across the country, with matching Coleman tents, were funded by big-name Democratic donors with last names like Rockefeller, Pritzker, and Soros. A Politico piece declared it “surprising” that “Biden’s biggest donors” are backing the protesters. “Two of the organizers supporting the protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros and was previously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change.”
Politico’s article came out months after the protests began. It is a telling example of mainstream media’s ideological monoculture that journalists who delayed even asking such questions then found themselves surprised that left-wing dark money was funding radical protests on campus.
This willful blindness to the beliefs of the protesters they are covering also poses a challenge when trying to describe them. Some outlets, like the Associated Press, describe student activists as “antiwar protesters.” Others refer to them as “pro-Palestinian,” when the correct description would be “anti-Israel” and, in many cases, simply anti-Semitic. Not surprisingly, such reporters also end up uncritically repeating Hamas propaganda. The Post quoted a Barnard student who had been arrested for participating in Columbia’s encampment. “There’s these big mainstream media outlets that are making it breaking news that Columbia canceled in-person classes, but not breaking news that mass graves were discovered in Gaza,” she proclaimed. The Post reporter felt no need to mention that the claim about mass graves had been thoroughly debunked. Perhaps the reporter didn’t know. Perhaps her editor didn’t know. Perhaps no one at the paper knew. Perhaps they chose not to know.
Or perhaps they knew, and they wanted the lie to stand unmolested.
Biden can’t be trusted to take on anti-Semitism
The Biden executive branch sees the white male patriarchy behind every alleged failure of social justice, from ‘pay inequities’ that allegedly afflict females and persons of colour to ‘poor health outcomes’. No other causes of different life trajectories – personal choice, different skill levels, cultural background, substance abuse, etc – may be contemplated. The reason is always discrimination.
In February 2023, Biden ordered the federal government to incorporate equity thinking into every aspect of its operations. Ninety federal agencies have adopted ‘Equity Action Plans’ to address the ‘discrimination that underserved communities face’. The federal science agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, hand out lucrative grants to study intersectionality. They demand ‘diversity’ in research labs and clinical trials as a corrective to the racism of Western science. The US military is on a crusade to eradicate heteronormativity and colourblind meritocracy.
US representative Nancy Pelosi and US senator Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ legislative leaders, may voice support for Israel. But they and their party embrace the same philosophy that fuels the pro-Hamas campus protests. It is hard to find a Democratic state house or city hall that does not proudly proclaim its ‘anti-racist’ policies. Democratic school boards mandate ‘ethnic studies’ courses, which presume the existence of an enduring power struggle between the ‘marginalised’ and a white majority. State and local governments confer hiring preferences on non-white and female contractors, on the theory that merit-based systems of contracting are biased in favour of white males.
Democratic politicians promise ‘equity’, implying that American society is inherently unfair. They support the racial preferences in college admissions that have driven down the number of Jewish students, since highly qualified Jews take up slots needed to increase the presence of less qualified ‘underrepresented minorities’.
Biden received plaudits for his Days of Remembrance speech last week. But the performance was an exercise in hypocrisy. Campus anti-Semitism is the outgrowth of fundamental academic and Democratic commitments. Universities will not cure themselves unless they revamp their curricula and hire traditional scholars, rather than robotic practitioners of critical theory and activist wannabes. The ‘anti-Semitism training’ that administrators are proposing in the hope of extinguishing donor rebellions is a diversionary tactic. One can’t train one’s way out of a worldview that is baked into academic personnel and the courses they teach, even if adding to the diversity, equity and inclusion portfolio were not a patently counterproductive idea.
As long as the Democratic Party and its presidential standard-bearer remain committed to the narrative of white privilege and racial inequity, hatred of Israel and rationalisations for terrorism will be reliable products of the American left. No presidential speech will change that fact.
From Ian:
Richard Kemp:
Biden's cynical Rafah obsession only strengthens Hamas
Most damningly of all is Biden’s withholding supplies of some armaments to Israel, including precision-guided munitions. This from a man who said in 2019 that any such action would be “absolutely preposterous” and “beyond comprehension”.
Biden hopes that this will all win back the anti-Israel elements of his support base. In his calculation that clearly trumps any and all damage inflicted on an ally that is fighting for its life on multiple fronts. The damage will be profound.
It may not have a decisive effect on a military offensive in Rafah. The IDF has sufficient stocks of munitions to complete that mission, although some ammunition may have to be rationed, potentially costing Israeli soldiers’ lives; and any shortage of precision weapons may have to be compensated by unguided bombs, which could cost some Gazan civilian lives.
But Biden’s actions will certainly strengthen Hamas. Its survival depends on Israel being stopped from its advance into Rafah. The growing U.S.-led international pressure on Israel can only encourage Hamas to fight harder and longer.
The terrorists’ only incentive to consider releasing hostages is a pause in hostilities to buy time and potentially lead to a full cessation. If those objectives can be achieved as a result of U.S. pressure, that incentive melts away and thus Biden’s policies reduce the prospects of getting the surviving hostages back, including American citizens, or at least raise the price of any who are released.
Biden is therefore prolonging the war, both by the time that is passing as Israel wrestles with how to achieve its objectives while trying to maintain the bilateral relationship, and by the encouragement he gives to Hamas.
That is why Biden’s election-driven obstruction against Israel will operate against his intentions. Assuming Israel goes ahead regardless, which it will have to do in some way, he will be seen not to have stopped the violence. That will continue closer and closer toward voting day with even greater adverse effects for Biden’s Democrats.
Biden has opened a Pandora’s box
In his never-ending attempt to cultivate the “Where would they go anyway?” Arab vote in Michigan and other possible swing states, US President Joe Biden has opened a Pandora’s box that he is likely to regret.
I suggest that he has just succeeded in creating for himself a “four-bag error,” one with potentially decisive significance, by refusing to arm Israel with kits to be used for providing greater precision for missiles and shells in attacking Gaza.
Biden's blunders
Specifically, Biden’s blunders are the following: First, he has demeaned America both as an ally and as a great power protecting the free world. He has sent a terrible message to current and would-be allies as to the risks and costs of siding with the United States.
Secondly, and ironically, he has freed Israel’s leadership of some of their reluctance to counter American dictates. He has just hit Israel with, if not his best shot, then something close to it. Israel will not stop as a result of this. Ironically, they might thereby be forced to use less precise weaponry, thus defeating the stated American goal of minimizing harm to civilians.
Thirdly, the American people will see this embarrassment for what it is: “fair-weather friending” a close ally and clearly showing a preference for its terrorist enemies.
And lastly, he has handed his opponent, former president Donald Trump, on a silver platter no less, an issue that Trump has already railed at, and which likely will become an integral part of his campaign.
Those observers who have been wondering where Trump stands on the situation in the Middle East will not be wondering much longer. Trump has been presented with a galvanizing series of American betrayals of its friendship with Israel; despite his often-expressed disillusionment with and dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is certain to use these actions to create a glaring contrast.
That contrast was already seen recently with his walking back of support for a two-state solution. Now, on social media (Where else?) Trump quickly responded to Biden’s withholding of weaponry: “Crooked Joe Biden, whether he knows it or not, just said he will withhold weapons from Israel as they fight to eradicate Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“Hamas murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including babies, and are still holding Americans hostage, if the hostages are still alive. Yet Crooked Joe is taking the side of these terrorists... Remember, this war in Israel... would have NEVER have started if I was in the White House... But very soon, we will be back, and once again demanding PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” (Emphases are Trump’s).
Decision to withhold bombs from Israel ‘damages entire US-led bloc’
The Biden administration’s decision to withhold shipments of air-to-ground munitions is having an adverse effect on the entire Middle Eastern pro-United States bloc, a Western official tells JNS.
Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), the precision kits that turn “dumb bombs” into all-weather precision-guided munitions, and Small Diameter Bombs are on hold, with shipments frozen of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, according to a May 7 report by Politico.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the suspension, saying during a Senate hearing on May 8, “We’ve been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace. And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions. We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”
A Western official shed light on the broader implications of this decision, indicating that the public withholding of these munitions is a significant message in itself.
“The heart of the matter is the declaration. The fact that U.S. is not transferring and declaring it, this is the message,” the official explained.
This move is perceived negatively by America’s other Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while members of the radical Iranian-led Shi’ite axis, including Hamas, see it as encouraging.
The Western official also expressed concerns about the broader regional perception of this decision, suggesting it has already caused considerable damage.
“Even if the U.S. wants to climb down from the ladder quietly, most of the damage has been done. The region has understood; if it happened to Israel, it could happen to me,” he remarked, indicating a loss of trust among American allies.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
The Meaning of Israeli ‘Independence’
“There is no question that this year, our Yom Ha’atzma’ut celebrations are different,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an Independence Day message to Jews abroad. And indeed, the Jewish state’s transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day—as the former ends, the latter begins—was by all accounts less abrupt this evening, since the solemn and subdued atmosphere continued from one into the other.
The past seven months have been filled with fear and mourning, he said, but they “have reminded us, also, of our core qualities, of our power as a people to stand up, again and again, against hatred. To survive and speak our truth. Of our deep and sustaining caring for one another.”
Israelis used this moment to wrestle with what independence actually means to them, highlighted by two alternate takes on the traditional torch-lighting ceremony.
Forgoing the regular torch lighting in Jerusalem, reports i24 News, torches were “lit in Gaza border communities affected by the October 7 attacks, as well as in IDF bases that have suffered losses in the ongoing conflict. The individuals chosen to light the torches this year are being honored for their heroism during the October 7 attacks or their bravery in the subsequent war.”
One of those torches, notes the Times of Israel, sits “next to a giant stack of burned cars destroyed on the highway during the Hamas attack.”
As depressing as that scene sounds, it does well represent the state’s original idea of independence. As I noted in November, Israelis who lived in the Gaza border towns were raising their kids and their crops on the same land on which settled brave Jewish pioneers through the state’s birth pangs. Every inch of the land, right up to the borderline, had to be defended; anything that wasn’t guarded would be taken—some of the land that was guarded was taken anyway.
Then there is a fascinating, flipped version of the ceremony where torches are extinguished. Not torches representing Israel as a state, mind you—these aren’t anti-Zionist ceremonies. But they are harsh in their implicit and explicit criticism of the government. Relatives of hostages or victims, as well as survivors of the October 7 attacks, extinguish torches they hold that are symbolic of “sins” that led to the slaughter.
“I hereby extinguish the torch of the sin of conceit,” said one participant whose daughter was killed during the attacks. Two survivors extinguished the “the torch of indifference,” in their words.
Some were more profound than others, needless to say. But the theme seemed to be winning independence from assumptions that put the state in danger.
There is another aspect to the debate over independence that is made newly relevant by the events since October: independence from allies.
Abe Greenwald:
The Woke Jihad
The first thing to understand about any left-wing protest movement is that its nominal cause is irrelevant. Black Lives Matter isn’t about saving black lives. Trans activism isn’t about protecting trans children. And intersectionality isn’t about the suffering of the diverse disaffected. Never were, never will be. Underneath their particular brands, social-justice movements are assorted fronts in a radical war against the good. And so it is for the “pro-Palestinian” encampments.
Would a group trying to save black lives have seized on a statistically tiny number of police killings as justification to rid black neighborhoods of police? That’s what Black Lives Matter did. And by the time the cops were hobbled, and violent crime spiked precisely where police were most needed, the movement’s leaders were using corporate donations to buy safe suburban palaces. BLM was an attack on law enforcement, because law enforcement maintains the good working order of the United States. Undermine that and you’re left with chaos, which is the objective.
And celebratory chaos is precisely the goal of the radical trans movement. Consider Rose Montoya, the trans activist who went topless on the South Lawn of the White House during a Pride Month celebration. How does that viral stunt protect trans kids or evoke empathy for an outcast demographic? Every aspect of the movement is designed to undo our common appreciation for a safe and sane way of life. Denying solid biological reality, throwing kids into emotional disarray, scaring the hell out of parents, endorsing ruinous medical procedures for minors, and trolling everyone who’s not convinced—that’s the game. And just as BLM leaders got rich, trans stars are furnished with endorsements and media deals once they’ve done their part to tear down the edifice of stability.
Intersectional ideology has infiltrated our lives mostly through the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training programs at work and school. To conquer, you must first divide. That’s the DEI trainer’s remit—splitting formerly cohesive groups into racial, ethnic, and gender camps, highlighting their differences and coaxing out ugly resentments. Not surprisingly, DEI work increases bigotry. As one DEI theorist recently admitted to the Wall Street Journal, “People often leave diversity training feeling angry and with greater animosity toward other groups.” Because that’s what it’s supposed to do, especially regarding Jews. Soon after October 7, Tabia Lee, the disenchanted former head of DEI at California’s De Anza College, told the New York Post that she was called a “dirty Zionist” for bringing Jewish speakers to campus. And school administrators refused her request to issue a condemnation of anti-Semitism. Lee says, “I was told in no uncertain terms that Jews are ‘white oppressors’ and our job as faculty and staff members was to ‘decenter whiteness.’” Of the left’s post–October 7 bigotry, she writes, “This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.”
Yes, there are well-meaning individuals who support civil rights, gay rights, and gender equality. And if these well-meaning people are still supporting social-justice campaigns because they believe their stated aims, then they’ll support anyone.
But the performative lunatics who turned identity fanaticism into a national pastime are enemies of Israel, the Jews, the United States, and human decency itself. That makes them natural allies of terrorists, whatever their do-good cover stories.
As with previous left-wing campaigns, the “pro-Palestinian” movement offers nothing in support of its supposed purpose. It sides with Gaza’s governing terrorists, who start wars with the express goal of producing a surplus of dead Gazans. American Hamas supporters chant “Cease-Fire now” as Hamas refuses every cease-fire offer that Israel and the U.S. put on the table. Why? Because a cease-fire means no more dead Gazans, and dead Gazans are Hamas’s chief natural resource and most valuable export. It’s what brings in the billions of aid money that’s used to build tunnels where Hamas hides—while civilians absorb the blows overhead. If Israel were to stop short of eradicating Hamas, as the protesters want, many more Gazans would die in the future wars that Hamas has vowed to instigate.
No, the encampments aren’t pro-Palestinian. They’re the latest expression of the social-justice left’s impulse to destroy the virtuous and raise up the wicked.
Jerry Seinfeld showed anti-Jewish protesters are a minority
Ironically, Seinfeld probably worked harder for a degree he received just for showing up than many of the Palestinian flag-waving, keffiyeh-wearing future unemployed people protesting him.
Not only that, but his speech was laden with advice that would make these students’ lives infinitely happier.
“The slightly uncomfortable feeling of awkward humor is OK,” Seinfeld said. “It is worth the sacrifice of an occasional discomfort to have some laughs. Don’t lose that. Even if it’s at the cost of occasional hard feelings, it’s OK.”
But while we certainly need to address the explosion of antisemitism that has made life hell for Jewish students on campuses across the country (let alone on city streets across the world), we must also be sure to appreciate the full picture.
At Duke University, while a handful of students decided to walk out like petulant children who just couldn’t bear listening to the apolitical advice of a Jewish man, the vast majority stayed, listened, and drowned out the protesters by chanting, “Jerry.”
And while Golan endured far worse before, during, and after the Eurovision Song Contest, she received overwhelming support from the voting public, including maximum points from 14 different countries, many of whom are experiencing their own explosions of antisemitism.
None of this is to downplay what we’re seeing across the world. Life for Jews has become immeasurably worse in the West following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which somehow acted as a catalyst for further anti-Jewish hate here at home.
But it does remind us that the people marching in the streets, the people making threats, and the people stomping their way out of their own graduation ceremonies are in the minority. An incredibly vicious and vocal minority, sure, but a minority nonetheless.
And while there is certainly work to do to ensure peace and safety for Jews in the West, we should take solace in the fact that while there are some people out there who refuse to listen to Jerry Seinfeld because he is Jewish, their voices are drowned out by the majority who wanted to hear from him and cheer obvious truths: “We’re embarrassed about things we should be proud of and proud of things that we should be embarrassed about.”
Monday, May 20, 2024
