Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 13, 2024

Latest Palestinian poll: Gazans expect Egypt to shoot them, Palestinians still overwhelmingly support October 7, they all love Hamas

The latest PCPSR poll came out in mid-April. In most way it is similar to their previous poll from three months earlier, but some Palestinian attitudes that are quite important to understand are still barely mentioned in Western media.

71% of Palestinians still believe that Hamas was correct to launch the war in October, a consistent finding both in Gaza and the West Bank.

In Gaza, 70% of those in shelters run by UNRWA say that the organizers distribute aid unfairly based on political considerations.

Only 7% of Palestinians say Hamas is responsible for the suffering in Gaza.

The ability of Palestinians to delude themselves is apparently unlimited. While 78% agreed in December that murdering civilians in their homes is a war crime, only 5% think Hamas committed those war crimes. Most have not seen the videos of the atrocities on October 7, but even among the people who did see the videos, only 17% believe that Hamas committed the murders that they themselves saw on the videos. That's down from 31% in December.

When Gazans were asked how they expect Egypt to react if masses of people break through the barrier to Egypt, 68% expect Egyptian soldiers to shoot them dead.

When asked who should control Gaza after the war, 59% say Hamas should remain in charge. And 49% say that Hamas should be the ruler over all Palestinians.

70% of all Palestinians are satisfied with how Hamas is waging this war. 83% are satisfied with the Houthis intercepting ships and shooting missiles at Israel.

Twice as many Palestinians would vote for Hamas compared to Fatah if elections would be held today, 30% to 14%.

The answer to this next question shows that the scenario that the West insists must be the solution for Palestinian leadership is one that Palestinians would never accept:

Finally, we asked the public about if it is for or against an idea of a long-term vision for the day after in which the US and an Arab coalition comprising Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan would develop a plan that would strengthen the PA, restore negotiations based on the two-state solution, and bring about an Arab-Israeli peace and normalization. Almost three quarters (73%) said it stands against the idea

Similarly, this question showed a side of Palestinians that close observers know to be true but that Western media refuses to report:

We asked the public about its willingness to compromise for the sake of peace: “if during negotiations, Israel agrees to make painful concessions to the Palestinian side, would you be willing in this case to support a similar Palestinian position in offering similar concessions to Israel?” A majority of 63% (70% in the West Bank and 52% in the Gaza Strip) said “no,” while only one third (33%; 46% in the Gaza Strip and 24% in the West Bank) said “yes.”

The Palestinian attitude for years has been that they want the world to give the a state on a silver platter without any compromising for peace, and even without a peace agreement. As the UN General Assembly vote last week showed, they are being rewarded for their intransigence.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Today's explicit antisemitism in Arab media.And there is plenty, just from today.

Not this week ot this month. Today.

Akhbar El Yom (Egypt):

The tyranny of the Jews has not been stopped by calls for wisdom and mercy, and despite the negotiations, the machine of Israeli treachery continues on its path and humanity is evaded.Jewish arrogance is reinforced by the hidden support of great powers that pamper their allies and croak like an owl.

Al Madinah (Saudi Arabia):

Selfish and treacherous Zionist genes were born in the distant past, since the era of the Prophet Moses - peace be upon him - and they are still breeding and multiplying, and oh how safe the world is from Jewish genes!

Jafra News (Jordan) :

President Biden celebrates with the oppressive racist Jews of America who do not pay attention to the practices of their colony in Palestine against its people.

Al-Binaa (Syria):

It has become clear that the term anti-Semitism is an invention proposed by international Zionism after the so-called “Holocaust” carried out by the Germans against the Jews.

Al Anwer (pan-Islamic):

Revealing a malicious conspiracy of the Jews
In this context, the Arab thinker Ali Al-Sharafa Al-Hammadi says: I do not rule out at all that behind the dispersion of the Islamic call and the creation of intellectual confusion for Muslims are hidden hands, which created different and fabricated narratives in the words of the Companions, creating a state of contradictions, tensions, and intellectual polarization, and each sect now has its own reference. Private, which led to an intellectual and dialectical conflict that then turned into a physical conflict, resulting in Muslims fighting each other.

These evil hands were preparing their malicious plan, whether they were Jews who could not imagine that God would choose a messenger from other than their people, because they believed that the choice of prophets and messengers was limited to the children of Israel, because they are God’s chosen people, as they believe and claim. This aroused in their souls envy and jealousy for the appearance of a sent prophet. He carries a divine book for all people, including the so-called illiterate people who are not People of the Book, such as the Christians and the Jews. They did not give them any weight or respect and treated them in an inferior manner. This created in them grief and revenge when a prophet appeared among them.

...
The Jews achieved what they wanted, isolating the Qur’an from the lives of Muslims and following the divine approach, and the evidence today that we live in confirms the condemnation of the Qur’anic verses against the Jews and the children of Israel. It is the divine warning that anticipates the future with divine wisdom.

Thinker Ali Al-Sharafa Al-Hammadi says: Today we see that the Israelis rule the world, control its economies and its media, and provoke wars in order to maximize their financial capabilities, which is the weapon with which they were able to control the capabilities of peoples, create revolutions, and corrupt morals.

The hatred of Jews is explicit, but their denials of antisemitism get far more media attention than their actual antisemitism.

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05/12 Links: US withholding ‘sensitive intelligence’ on Hamas from Israel; Europe's public vote shines for Eden Golan at Eurovision; Israel marks first post-Oct. 7 Memorial Day

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Liberal media is still in denial about post-Oct. 7 antisemitism

Seven months of an unprecedented surge in antisemitism that has turned American college campuses and even K-12 schools into hostile environments for Jews has changed a lot of minds about the issue. The willingness of much of the political left to downplay or even justify the atrocities of Oct. 7—and then to flip the narrative about the war that Hamas started to one in which the victims of terrorism are somehow the real villains of the story—has shocked even many political liberals into rethinking their assumptions about where the real danger for Jews lies.

But not The New York Times.

As two lengthy news features published in the paper this week confirmed, the flagship of liberal journalism in the United States hasn’t let events or the reality of a post-Oct. 7 world interfere with their ideological or political agendas.

In one story, the newspaper devoted the time of four reporters to take a deep dive into contemporary antisemitism. But the result of what is described as their extensive research is that they have come to the conclusion that the real culprits are not the people who seek the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet, legitimize a genocidal terrorist movement as justified “resistance” or attempt to allow those responsible for the mass murder of 1,200 people to get away with it. Instead, the Times believes that the problem rests with (surprise!) Republicans who are rallying in support of a beleaguered State of Israel and who are opposed to the deluge of Jew-hatred on display in the American public square since the current war began.

In another article, the paper reported a congressional hearing about the growing problem of antisemitism in K-12 schools throughout the country as primarily one about how those in charge of these institutions scored points against members of Congress who care about the issue.

These are just two prominent examples out of many that could be pointed to that show how the Times and other liberal media outlets manipulate coverage of this issue to promote their own partisan agendas. They are worth noting precisely because they illustrate how ideological agendas work to present a distorted picture of an antisemitism crisis that serves primarily to deflect attention from the real cause.

In this case, that means denying or downplaying the fact that the principal engines of antisemitism in 2024 America are left-wing ideologies like critical race theory and intersectionality, which grant a permission slip to Jew-hatred. The pervasive influence of these toxic ideas in American education has helped to indoctrinate largely ignorant students to parrot what earlier generations might have easily understood to be Soviet-era Marxist propaganda about Zionism being racism and Israel being an “apartheid state” against which all “resistance”—even the orgy of rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that Palestinians carried on Oct. 7—can be justified.

Israel’s PR-War Pandemonium

The job of international spokesperson for Israel, in a state of war, is fit for a patriot, a masochist, or a diva, or better yet all three. For most of the past six months, it was occupied by Eylon Levy, a 32-year-old British Israeli with an affinity for television cameras and seemingly infinite ability to absorb the abuse that comes from publicly defending Israel, at its least defensible and at its most. When Israel was still picking through the corpses in the kibbutzim near Gaza, he reminded viewers of the carnage—both the dead concertgoers and elderly (who were real victims) and “beheaded babies” (who turned out not to be). When Israel began hunting Hamas in Gaza, he defended his country’s actions without reservation, even when the civilian toll became unbearable. His tenure ended on the last day of March, reportedly after British Foreign Minister David Cameron took exception to Levy’s rhetoric. The story goes that Cameron’s office sent a curt message to Levy’s bosses, who suspended him and encouraged his resignation.

Levy says that these reports are inaccurate, and that he was forced out because he is not, and never was, a Netanyahu loyalist. He told me he has “no reason to doubt” a conflicting report that Sara Netanyahu, the child psychologist and former El Al flight attendant married to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, orchestrated his overthrow. Cameron was a pretext, he says. Levy’s version of events is one of many data points suggesting that the Netanyahu government is obsessed with the slavish loyalty of its staff. And Levy is not alone in wondering whether such a government is fit to lead a country as divided as Israel, during this time of maximum stress. (Netanyahu’s office did not reply to a request for comment on Levy and the circumstances of his hiring and departure.)

When I met him last month in Tel Aviv, Levy still seemed dazed by the speed of his rise and fall. He said he’d never met Sara Netanyahu or her husband, but if they thought he was less than devoted to Bibi’s politics, they were onto something. Before the war, he said, he had been among the hundreds of thousands who had filled Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv to protest the government and heap disgust on Netanyahu. “The protests became a social happening—just what people did on a Saturday night,” he said. His presence was sincere, but also, in that sense, “entirely unremarkable and quite expected for someone in my demographic.”

And his distaste for Netanyahu did not evaporate after October 7. Levy’s feed on X (formerly Twitter) confirms much of what he told me about his personal distaste for the prime minister, before the Hamas attack and indeed even in the days after it. He tweeted witheringly about Netanyahu’s failure to stop the attack (“This will be [his] legacy”), and about his “useless” ministers’ failure to address the public. But he went into spokesperson mode in record time—even before he was officially tapped for the job. Levy, who says he was “taking a professional break,” when the attack happened, had previously worked as a media adviser to Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Now he saw an opportunity. “The prime minister’s office had been caught with its pants down,” Levy told me. “It was simply not prepared to deal with the deluge of media attention.” He stacked his laptop on a pile of books on his dining-room table and positioned his lamp and webcam just so. “I thought: I know how to do media. So I put out the message that I was available to give media interviews.”

The media took him up on the offer, and he did nearly a dozen TV hits. Within days, he says, an envoy from the prime minister’s office asked him whether he’d like to “come on board in some official capacity.” The envoy, Rotem Sella, was the Hebrew publisher of Netanyahu’s 2022 memoir and had now joined the government to correct the pants problem. Sella, Levy says, knew that Levy had protested Bibi but didn’t care. “It was a completely insane proposition,” Levy said—a guy in his living room, openly contemptuous of the government, would now be paid to defend it. “But everyone was doing their bit, so I said, ‘Absolutely. Count me in.’”

“Within 24 hours, I found myself effectively being nationalized,” he told me. The contemporaneous record strikes a vainer tone. He tweeted a photograph of himself at a lectern, with the comment “Cometh the hour,” a Churchillian line (“... cometh the man”) that is, like most compliments, best bestowed by others rather than by oneself. But as long as Israel’s actual leaders were bunkered away from public scrutiny—when they did appear, ordinary Israelis screamed at them—this living-room Churchill could run unopposed as Israel’s man of the hour.

Lowy’s lament: ‘I know how insidious antisemitism can be’

Looking in from the outside, Sir Frank Lowy is shaken by what is happening in Australia. He’s been watching as antisemitism seeps into the country and weakens its famous sense of “a fair go”.

This is new, something he never experienced in his 66 years in Australia.

“When I arrived in Sydney in 1952 and got a job in a factory, I was seen as a ‘New Australian’ and I took it as a term of endearment, not exclusion.

“In the canteen, we ate our sandwiches together and no one remarked on my foreignness or questioned my religion.

“And in six decades of running Westfield, I never experienced antisemitism. Once, a newspaper referred to me as ‘a Jewish businessman’. I objected, and it never happened again.”

While many believe the current conflict in Gaza has not led to antisemitism in Australia, Lowy has seen it before, and he does.

“In Europe in the late ’30s and ’40s, I experienced it directly. I know what it feels like, and I know how insidious it can be.

“In Europe back then, it had become safe for people to express antisemitism, and now it’s becoming safe to do so in Australia. It may take a different form, but the feeling is the same, and it’s deeply disturbing.”

Latest EoZ cartoons

I'm a bit behind, but here are some....

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Read all about it here!

Professor of Jewish studies just cannot accept that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, even after encountering it herself

Flora Cassen, an associate professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies and associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, writes in Haaretz about a Reddit exchange she had with anti-Israel fanatics. Even after seeing how filled with hate they are, she still cannot call them antisemites.

The haters parroted Students for Justice in Palestine and claimed that every single Israeli has no civilian status - they are all illegal settlers and therefore fair game for being killed.

[She wrote] "What you're saying that any person (including babies, children, elderly, etc.) who lives in Israel within the green line is a colonizer who deserves to be massacred?" They responded, "I'm not saying they deserve to be massacred, just that Israelis are not simply civilians. Every single Israeli exists on land violently stolen from Palestinians within the lifetime of the average grandma. Simply just existing as an Israeli makes you a weapon of violence against Palestinians bc you are living on land that was stolen from them & their parents/grandparents, etc. If you don't want your baby killed in the process of people liberating their own land from their oppressors, maybe don't be one of their oppressors."

I could feel hate and anger in those postings, which scared me, even though I had no idea whom I was dialoguing with. But I decided to continue trying. "But what if you happened to be born there and your entire family lived there?" I wrote, "Would you all be fair play to be murdered? Israel needs to end the war, leave the illegal settlements, end apartheid, and stop oppressing Palestinians. I'm not defending what they're doing. But to mark them all as colonizers (including within the green line) who are fair play to be murdered just because of where they were born is a step too far."

Notice that saying that Jewish civilians who live across the Green Line are deserving of being murdered is not a step too far for this professor. But that's isn't enough for the bloodlust of the haters:

My persistence was in vain. They answered in bold letters, "They ARE all colonizers. So, to answer your question, yes. Nobody in Israel is unaware of what's happening; every person in that illegal apartheid state is 100% aware of what their living there means. There are no legal settlements bc Israel itself is not legal. These are mostly Europeans that colonized Palestine in the modern age. They don't just get to keep a little sliver for themselves. Palestine should be ruled by Palestinian ppl & if Israelis want to stay, they have to abide by Palestinian laws......Here's a tough one to digest for ppl raised under intense liberal propaganda. Sometimes justice is not peaceful. "

At that point she gave up, but she then defends the haters being called antisemitic:

This conversation brought home how inadequate our terminology has become at capturing the essence of the current debates.

Antisemitism is a term that emerged in the 19th century to refer to political and racial hatred of Jews. It reached its apogee under the Nazis, who believed Jews were a separate and evil human race that had to be exterminated. Since then, not only has racial science been debunked as pseudo-science, but Jews are far more likely to be described as a religious or ethnic group. Moreover, people who express antisemitic ideas often have Jewish friends.

For example, pastor John Hagee, a popular televangelist who once said that God "sent Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land," is a friend of the State of Israel and was invited to speak at the rally against antisemitism in Washington in November 2023.

Students in the pro-Palestine tent protests at Columbia University sang slogans that glorified Hamas and the killing of Israelis, yet welcomed Jewish students for a Passover seder. Nazis never would have joined a march against antisemitism or welcomed Jews in their tent to celebrate a Jewish holiday. These contradictions highlight why the term antisemitism generates so much confusion. How can a term that evokes the mass murder of all Jews without exception be used to label those who hate some Jews but not others?

How can someone who says "some of my best friends are Jewish" be antisemitic?

Instead, Cassen tries to come up with a new term for rabid anti-Zionists that cleanse them of the charge of hating Jews: "Eliminationists."

Eliminationists derive their worldview from post-colonial theory and see the State of Israel in this framework. ....Eliminationists also understand racism and inequalities as the outcomes of the colonial and white supremacist structures persisting in our societies. Their life's goal is to fight for justice and against all racism and inequality, and they always include antisemitism among the racisms they fight.

To the extent that eliminationists call for the "removal" of the State of Israel, but not for harm against Jews as a racial or even ethnic group, they are not antisemitic. However, an ideology does not need to be antisemitic to be cruel and built on flawed intellectual foundations.

Cassen makes two major mistakes.

Her first mistake is by defining antisemitism as nothing less than Nazi-style demands for the death of every Jews on the planet. The Spanish Inquisition wasn't antisemitic because it wasn't racial - the Jews could convert to Christianity. The libel of Jews poisoning the wells during the Black Death was not antisemitic because it had no racial component. It means that Iran's former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust, or Hamas leaders, whose charter still calls for the murder of all Jews, could not be antisemitic since they met with members of Neturei Karta.

That is a very strange mistake for a professor of history and Jewish studies.

Her other mistake is to believe what the modern antisemites are saying. They claim that they are against antisemitism, and are only against Israelis.

Yet she didn't bring up the obvious rejoinder to the haters she wasted time with on Reddit. When they say that "Israelis" are legitimate targets, they only mean the 80% of Israelis who are Jews. They don't want to eliminate 100% of Israelis - they want to eliminate 100% of Israeli Jews. They want a genocide of seven million Jews.

If that isn't antisemitism, what is?

Obviously, Cassen isn't defending the haters, but she believes their lies that they don't hate Jews. She could have asked the next obvious question: what should be done with the 95% of Jews worldwide who support Israel's existence? Are they also the enemy, that should be destroyed? That was the opinion of the many Muslims who have attacked synagogues in America and worldwide over the past couple of decades.

Yet Muslims are just as adamant that they are not antisemitic as the Reddit posters Cassen encountered.

I once coined a term for the irrational, rabid hate of Israel, "misoziony." The intent was not to say that haters of Israel are not antisemitic but to stop the term antisemitism from being a distraction when pointing out that rabid anti-Zionism is just as illogical, just as irrational, just as hateful and just as impossible to justify as antisemitism is. Maybe Dr. Cassen would prefer that term. But it doesn't mean that the misozionists aren't antisemitic - because when you dissect their beliefs, that is exactly what they are.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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More aid has gone to Gaza through Israel than through Egypt - even BEFORE Egypt stopped aid last week

During this past week, Egypt has blocked all aid into Gaza that came from Egypt.

Both through Rafah:

Egypt has refused to coordinate with Israel on the entry of aid into Gaza from the Rafah Crossing due to Israel’s “unacceptable escalation,” Egypt’s state-affiliated Alqahera News satellite TV reported on Saturday, citing a senior official.

The official also said that Egypt held Israel responsible for the deterioration of the situation in the Gaza Strip.

And via Kerem Shalom:

Although Israel has reopened Kerem Shalom and some fuel has gone into Gaza from there, humanitarian aid like food and medicines has not been allowed through the crossing since last Sunday, according to Scott Anderson, a senior official at UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Gaza.

One reason is that Egypt, where most of the aid for Gaza is collected and loaded, is resisting sending trucks toward Kerem Shalom, according to two U.S. officials and another Western official who are involved in the aid operation, as well as two Israeli officials.

Where is the world demand for Egypt to release the aid, ready to be driven into Gaza? Where are the social media posts and the caplus protests and the op-eds condemning Egypt for deliberately withholding aid from Gaza?

Why does no one want to pressure Egypt?

From reading the media, one gets the impression that before last week, the lion's share of aid to Gaza came via Egypt through the Rafah crossing. But it turns out that this is wrong. Far more aid has been coming through Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing, as this UNRWA graphic shows. Here are the comparisons for every month:

Since January, Israel has sent more truckloads into Gaza than Egypt has. Moreover, the number of trucks from Egypt have gone down since the first months of the war. At the moment, more truckloads total have gone through Kerem Shalom than through Rafah to Gaza, 14,000 to 11,000.

What media has reported this? None I have seen.

Part of the reason the world keeps castigating Israel is because the media and politicians refuse to say anything negative about Egypt. Israel must be framed as malicious and genocidal, and the truth - even according to UNRWA, which has done all it can to demonize Israel's aid efforts - shows that between Egyptian refusal to allow tens of thousands of Gazans to flee there, Egypt extorting bribes for thousands more to come as "VIPs," Egypt's refusing half of the medical cases that need to exit Gaza, and now Egypt's refusal to send aid that Gazans need every day, it seems Egypt cares less about Gaza civilians than Israel does.

And what news source will risk reporting that?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Read all about it here!

05/11 Links: Hamas’s hostages: Who are the five remaining Americans still held by the terror group?; Eden Golan gives a flawless performance in Eurovision final

From Ian:

Switzerland wins Eurovision, Israel lands in fifth place overall with second-highest televote

Switzerland wins the Eurovision song contest while Israel ends up in fifth place overall.

Israel got an impressive 323 points from the televotes — the second-highest amount — and 52 points from the jury.

Croatia got the most points from the televote, 337, but Switzerland’s Nemo ran away with the win with their song “The Code.”

Eurovision Song Contest 2024 results
Switzerland: 591
Croatia: 547
Ukraine: 453
France: 445
Israel: 375
Ireland: 278

Don’t let the Eurovision boycotters win

Thankfully, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises Eurovision, has resisted calls to ban Israel. However, it did force Israel to change the words of its song on the grounds that it was ‘political’. The original song was entitled ‘October Rain’, and was a moving lament for those murdered by Hamas last year. It has since been renamed ‘Hurricane’ and the lyrics have been rewritten.

Complaints that ‘October Rain’ was too political might have held a bit more water if Eurovision didn’t have a history of including political songs. A Greek entry in 1976 criticised Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Switzerland entered an anti-war song in 2023 in opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This year, the Dutch entry, ‘Europapa’, is a celebration of open borders within the European Union.

Some may be tempted to dismiss the efforts to banish Israel from Eurovision as trivial. It’s just a singing competition, they might say. But this boycott needs to be seen in the broader context of the BDS movement. Launched in 2005, its goal is to delegitimise and culturally isolate Israel. It targets academia, musical events, sport, theatre, visual arts and much more. In every case the goal is to purge all spheres of public life of Israeli involvement. So not only is BDS deeply intolerant of all things Israeli, it is also a movement against freedom of expression. Individual Israeli performers and competitors are targeted simply because of their national background.

The targets of the Israel boycotters range from big corporations and brands, such as Barclays and Zara, to iconic global events, such as the Olympics and of course Eurovision itself. The current anti-Israel student protests are part of the boycott-Israel movement, too. Their chief objective is to force universities to break all links with Israel.

For anyone with an understanding of anti-Semitism, this pervasive boycott campaign is driven by an all too familiar sentiment. Its main objective is to target, isolate and exclude Jews from wider society. They may not want to slaughter Jews, as Hamas explicitly says it wants to. But the boycotters would certainly like to erase all traces of the Jewish State from public life.

So while it might seem like a small thing, voting for Israel in Eurovision would be a great way of sticking two fingers up to those determined to turn Israel into a pariah state. We need to do all we can to resist this campaign to wipe Israel off the map.

Hysterics for Hamas

The female voices rose high-pitched and shrill above the crowd:
“Five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terrorist state.”
“We don’t want no Zionists here, say it loud, say it clear.”
“Resistance is justified when people are occupied.”

The voices that answered them were also overwhelmingly female, emanating from hundreds of students chanting and marching around tents pitched in front of Columbia University’s neoclassical Butler Library, part of an effort in late April to prevent the university from uprooting the encampment.

The female tilt among anti-Israel student protesters is an underappreciated aspect of the pro-Hamas campus hysteria. True, when activists need muscle (to echo University of Missouri professor Melissa Click’s immortal call during the 2015 Black Lives Matter protests), males are mobilized to smash windows and doors or hurl projectiles at the police, for example. But the faces behind the masks and before the cameras are disproportionately female, as seen in this recent gem from the Princeton demonstrations.

Why the apparent gender gap? One possible reason is that women constitute majorities of both student bodies and the metastasizing student-services bureaucracies that cater to them. Another is the sex skew in majors. The hard sciences and economics, whose students are less likely to take days or weeks out from their classes to party (correction: “stand against genocide”) in cool North Face tents, are still majority male. The humanities and soft social sciences, the fields where you might even get extra credit for your intersectional activism, are majority female. (Not surprisingly, males have spearheaded recent efforts to guard the American flag against desecration.) In progressive movements, the default assumption now may be to elevate females ahead of males as leaders and spokesmen. But most important, the victim ideology that drives much of academia today, with its explicit enmity to objectivity and reason as white male constructs, has a female character.

Student protests have always been hilariously self-dramatizing, but the current outbreak is particularly maudlin, in keeping with female self-pity. “The university would rather see us dead than divest,” said a member of the all-female press representatives of UCLA’s solidarity encampment on X. The university police and the Los Angeles Police Department “would rather watch us be killed than protect us.” (The academic Left, including these anti-Zionists, opposes police presence on campus; UCLA chancellor Gene Block apologized in June 2020 after the LAPD lawfully mustered on university property during the George Floyd race riots.) Command of language is not a strong point of these student emissaries. “There needs to be an addressment (sic) of U.S. imperialism and its ties to the [University of California] system,” said another UCLA encampment spokeswoman.

It was not too long ago when administrators started bringing in therapy dogs to campus libraries and dining halls to help a female-heavy student body cope with psychic distress, especially after the election of Donald Trump. “Trigger warnings” were implemented to protect female students from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and other great works of literature. Campus discourse and its media echo chamber rang with accounts of the mental-health crisis on campus, whose alleged sufferers were overwhelmingly female.

Hamas’s hostages: Who are the five remaining Americans still held by the terror group? Often overshadowed by the Israeli war in Gaza in response to last year’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, 133 surviving hostages are still held by Hamas. Five of them are Americans.

Here are their stories.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23
“I love you.” And then: “I’m sorry.” That is not a pair of text messages that a mother wants to receive from her son early on a Saturday morning. Rachel Goldberg-Polin looked at her phone and “knew something horrible was unfolding in my world,” as she would tell reporters at the United Nations later that month.

Rachel had moved to Israel with her husband, Jonathan Polin, when her son Hersh was 7 years old. He soon developed a love of soccer that his parents, who migrated to the Jewish state as adult Americans, couldn’t quite share — a fan especially of Hapoel Jerusalem, a century-old soccer team associated with the Israeli Left.

“He was always teased for being a lover of peace, a crunchy granola dreamer,” his mother told the Lever in December.

Hersh grew into a young man enthusiastic about travel and music. He left home on the evening of Oct. 6 to attend a music festival in southern Israel, just a few miles from the Gaza Strip. That festival would end in carnage as Hamas terrorists surrounded the remote site and murdered more than 250 attendees, according to first responders.

Hersh and one of his best friends, Aner Shapira, managed to reach a roadside bomb shelter where 27 others also sought refuge. Hamas terrorists surrounded the place and tossed 11 grenades through the door. Shapira, whose great-grandfather reportedly was a signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, “managed to pick up eight of them and throw them back out,” as Rachel Goldberg-Polin emphasized during that October press appearance, before succumbing to his wounds.

A video recorded by Hamas confirmed the account and showed Hersh being forced into the bed of a pickup truck, bleeding from the stump of his left arm. Rachel Goldberg-Polin has emerged as one of the most internationally prominent advocates for the release of the scores of hostages held by Hamas.

“There are many of the 133 [hostages] that the world never hears about because there is so very much noise,” she told the attendees of an April 7 rally in New York City. “I don’t hear a lot about the eight Muslim Arabs being held hostage or the eight Thai Buddhists or the two black African Christians. There are hostages from Mexico and Nepal who are Catholic and Hindu. We do an injustice when we erase these people when we are talking about who is still being held hostage.”

A few weeks later, her son appeared in a new proof-of-life video released by Hamas amid fraught negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage deal. “We’re here today with a plea to all of the leaders of the parties who have been negotiating to date,” Jonathan Polin said after seeing the video. “That includes Qatar, Egypt, the United States, Hamas, and Israel. Be brave, lean in, seize this moment, and get a deal done.”

Watch the full interview: https://t.co/CEbOnNZNCL

Or listen to the audio at https://t.co/DaUOzc1iYx. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) May 10, 2024

@taliaraab took to the streets of NYC to ask Americans if they know about the American hostages being held in Gaza. Their answers will surprise you! #hostages #gaza #hamas #bringthemhome 🎗️ pic.twitter.com/HOuj89qQhN
— Gabby Klein (@GabbyKlein1) May 7, 2024

05/10 Links Pt2: The rage against Israel at Eurovision is disgraceful; South Africa asks World Court to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah; How Princeton got burned by Iran

From Ian:

The entitlement and intolerance of the campus Gaza camps

Thankfully, some students are bravely challenging the protesters. One third-year Cambridge student held an Israeli flag aloft just across the road from those blocking Peter Thiel’s talk.

But what about those in charge of our universities? When students behave like toddlers, refusing food, demanding hot-water bottles and yelling ‘genocide’, where are the adults? Far from condemning the actions of the students, over 300 members of staff at Oxford University have signed an open letter in support of the protesters. It describes their camp in grandiose terms as ‘a public-facing global education project’. One signatory is Vernal Scott, Oxford’s head of equality and diversity. Last month, Scott made headlines after he publicly praised the Belgian authorities for trying to close down the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels. This support for free speech sounds hollow when it comes from those only interested in hearing views they endorse.

When a high-profile senior manager and hundreds of academics take a public stance on an issue, their view risks becoming, by default, the institutional position. It is only a small step away from saying ‘The university thinks…’. When it is clear what ‘the university thinks’, then academic freedom is rendered meaningless. Anyone who thinks differently knows they are putting their neck on the line if they challenge the consensus. At universities, where the Transgender Pride flag is flown from buildings, toilets are gender-neutral and staff training is provided by activist groups such as Gendered Intelligence, gender-critical feminists know they may technically have academic freedom, but also that expressing gender-critical views will come at a high price.

Earlier today, university leaders went to Downing Street to meet with the UK prime minister to discuss how to balance supporting free speech while preventing harassment of Jewish students. Good. But the fact that this meeting was even necessary shows that many university managers need reminding not just that academic freedom is important, but also what it actually entails.

Academic freedom demands tolerance. It calls on us to allow viewpoints we disagree with to be heard and to use our intellectual muscles to challenge ideas we find offensive. However, academic freedom does not give protesters the right to shout down or silence other people, physically bar people from buildings or intimidate students into staying away from campus. Defending academic freedom means stopping students from engaging in these activities.

Academic freedom also means students and scholars have the right to question every intellectual, moral and political orthodoxy. For this reason, adopting an institutional position on an issue is not an expression of academic freedom, but rather a means of restricting it.

In a university that truly values academic freedom, students should have the right to protest. But this is a limited right. It stops when other people’s freedom of speech, freedom of movement and right to disengage from politics and pursue scholarship are curtailed. It is good that Rishi Sunak is meeting vice-chancellors. But there is much further to go if we are to truly defend academic freedom.

South Africa asks World Court to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah

South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah as part of additional emergency measures over the war in Gaza, the UN’s top court said on Friday.

In the ongoing case brought by South Africa, which accuses Israel of acts of genocide against Palestinians, the World Court in January ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians.

Israel did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It has previously said it is acting in accordance with international law in Gaza, has called South Africa’s genocide case baseless, and accused Pretoria of acting as “the legal arm of Hamas.”

In filings published on Friday, South Africa is seeking additional emergency measures in light of the ongoing military action in Rafah, which it calls the “last refuge” for Palestinians in Gaza. Israel says the operation in the southern city is crucial to defeating the remaining Hamas battalions holding out there.

South Africa asked the court to order that Israel cease the Rafah offensive and allow unimpeded access to Gaza for UN officials, organizations providing humanitarian aid, and journalists and investigators.

According to South Africa, Israel’s military operation is killing the Palestinians of Gaza while at the same time starving them by denying them humanitarian aid to enter.

“Those who have survived so far are facing imminent death now, and an order from the Court is needed to ensure their survival,” South Africa’s filing said.

Prominent legal blog: Anti-IHRA statement from 1,000 Jewish professors ‘bizarre, ultimately dishonest’

A statement signed by more than 1,000 Jewish professors denouncing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism for “conflating antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel” is “bizarre and ultimately dishonest,” David Bernstein wrote on the popular legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.

Bernstein, a university professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and executive director of its Liberty and Law Center, wrote that much of the opposition to the Antisemitism Awareness Act over its codification of the IHRA definition “has been hysterical and counterfactual.”

“If one had hoped an academic letter would be more reality-based, one would be disappointed,” he wrote.

The 1,000-plus faculty members say that the IHRA definition considers criticism of Israel to be necessarily antisemitic.

“The IHRA definition of antisemitism, however, never says that criticism of Israel, etc., is ‘in and of itself’ antisemitic. Indeed, it specifically says ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic,’” Bernstein writes.

“Not only have Jewish critics of Israel, indeed Jews who don’t think Israel should exist, not been silenced, it seems like they never shut up,” he added. “The latter group is a tiny fringe of the Jewish community, but they appear disproportionately in both mainstream and social media.”

Bernstein added that he expects “very little from the academy these days,” so he’s not surprised to see so many signatories of “this (at best) hyperbolic letter.”

“I am at least a little disappointed to see some prominent law professors on the list,” he added. “But maybe I should reduce my expectations of the legal academy, too.”

The New York Times describes why the US is against Israel going into Rafah.

To Biden — and many leaders of other countries — the destruction of Hamas is simply not a realistic goal. The group’s fighters are in deep, fortified tunnels that could take months if not years to eliminate, U.S. intelligence officials say.

This is ridiculous. Israel already effectively destroyed most of the Hamas battalions in Gaza. They were in the same, deep, fortified tunnels in Gaza City and Khan Younis.

If Israel gets cuts Hamas off from incoming aid - probably one for the goals of seizing the border with Egypt - Hamas will be starved out from the tunnels.

Even if Israel killed most remaining fighters, new ones would emerge.

Some might but if Hamas is defeated, and recognized as having lost, it would not attract new recruits. There would be other terror groups but they take time to build. It took Hamas 15 years to build its tunnel infrastructure. Those days of impunity are over.

Not only might the benefits of trying to wipe out Hamas be small, but the costs seem large, U.S. officials believe. The hostages Hamas still holds — who are likely being kept alongside the group’s leaders — could die. And the humanitarian toll in Rafah, where many Gazan refugees have fled, could be horrific. “Smashing into Rafah,” a Biden aide said yesterday, “will not get to that sustainable and enduring defeat of Hamas.”

Besides being wrong, the implication is that Israel must live with a terror group next door that has shown the will and capacity to murder thousands of Israelis. The US would never tolerate another Al Qaeda or ISIS across a land border, and within two hours drive of major American cities, no matter what the cost. Demanding Israel do that is simply hypocritical.

Already, Israel’s initial operation in Rafah has had costs. After Israeli forces took over one side of a border crossing with Egypt, Egyptian officials temporarily closed the crossing, preventing aid from entering, U.S. officials say. Egypt — which has long blocked Gazans from entering, partly out of fear of Hamas — worries that a battle for Rafah could lead to an unstoppable flow of refugees.

So pressure Egypt! The US gives it billions a year. If the US is eager to use aid to Israel as leverage, why won't it do the same to Egypt to force it to provide aid and to accept Gazans who wish to take refuge there? If the US cares about the lives of Gazans in Rafah, then isn't that the logical response?

But blaming Israel for Egypt's treating Gazans like dirt is....well, it is what antisemites do to Jews.

An invasion could cause rifts beyond Egypt, too. Saudi Arabia has previously signaled an interest in a diplomatic deal with Israel, which could solidify Israel’s position as part of an anti-Iran alliance alongside Arab countries and the U.S. But a surge in civilian deaths in Gaza could make it hard for Saudi Arabia to justify any deal. (Thomas Friedman, the Times Opinion columnist, has argued that Israel must choose between Rafah and Riyadh, the Saudi capital.)

Look at all those "could"s. Saudi Arabia is not exactly subject to pressure - they do what is best for them, and they won't hurt their Saudi Vision 2030 initiative because Hamas has made Gazans into human shields.

And Friedman has never predicted anything accurately, as far as I can tell. Unless he accidentally quoted a smart taxi driver.

Seriously, none of the things mentioned here adds up to anything real. I hope that the people making this inane analysis are not the same people that make decisions on US defense matters.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/10 Links Pt1: Shapiro: Biden Sides With Satan; The West is proving that Islamist terrorism works; UNGA votes 143-9 to upgrade Palestinian statehood status

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Biden betrays Israel for the feeling of a few clueless college students

What a difference a day makes.

On Tuesday President Biden was speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum commemoration at the Capitol in Washington.

There he drew a direct comparison between the events of the Holocaust and the attacks on Israel of October 7th.

That is not my comparison. It was President Biden’s. Talking about the phrase “Never Again” he said:

“Here we are not 75 years later but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting. They’re already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas who brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you. And we will not forget.”

As I say, what a difference a day makes.

Within hours the same President who uttered those words was attempting to prevent Israel’s victory in Gaza. By withholding arms shipments to Israel Biden made it clear that he does not want Israel to achieve its military objectives in the final battle of Rafah.

Opponents of the war have briefed for months about the need for a pause or a ceasefire. But there has been an effective pause for months as Israel has waited for this push into Hamas’s final stronghold.

It is believed that Rafah is the place where the remaining Israeli hostages are being held, and the place where Yahya Sinwar — the mastermind of the October 7th attacks — is hiding.

Most likely surrounded by “the best” hostages — which to his sick mind would include the remaining child captives.

“Never again” indeed.

If the Israeli army does not destroy Hamas in Rafah then the war is effectively for nothing, and all the pain and grief on all sides might as well not have occurred.

As I have said before, there is no point in putting out 80% of a fire. Until the Israeli army can clear Hamas out of Rafah the fire of Gaza is not out.

But Biden seems to be bowing to pressure from some of his own base. As someone joked a few months back, Biden does indeed want to focus on a two-state solution, but the two states are Minnesota and Michigan.

He is desperate to chase the few tens of thousands of voters who might turn on him because they care about Hamas more than they care about America.

Bret Stephans: President Biden Just Made His Biggest Blunder

The munitions cutoff helps Hamas.
The tragedy in Gaza is fundamentally the result of Hamas’s decisions: to start the war in the most brutal way possible; to fight it behind and beneath civilians; to attack the border crossings through which humanitarian aid is delivered; and to hold on cruelly to Israel’s 132 remaining hostages, living or dead. Whatever else the arms cutoff might accomplish when it comes to Israel, it is both a propaganda coup and a tactical victory for Hamas that validates its decision to treat its own people as human shields. And it emboldens Hamas to continue playing for time — especially in the hostage negotiations — with the idea that the longer it holds out, the likelier it is to survive.

It doesn’t end the war. It prolongs it.
No Israeli government, even one led by someone more moderate than Benjamin Netanyahu, is going to leave Gaza with Hamas still in control of any part of the territory. If the Biden administration has ideas about how to do that without dislodging it from Rafah, we have yet to hear of them.

That means that, one way or the other, Israel is going in, if not with bombs — and the administration is also considering barring precision-guidance kits — then with far-less accurate 120-millimeter tank shells and 5.56-millimeter bullets. Other than putting Israeli troops at greater risk, does the Biden administration really think the toll for Palestinians will be less after weeks or months of house-to-house combat?

It diminishes Israel’s deterrent power and is a recipe for a wider war.
One of the reasons Israel isn’t yet fighting a full-blown war to its north is that Hezbollah has so far been deterred from a full-scale attack, not least from fears of having its arsenal of an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles decimated by the Israeli Air Force. But what if the Lebanese terrorist group looks at reports of Israeli munitions’ shortages and decides that now would be an opportune time to strike?

If that were to happen, the loss of civilian life in Tel Aviv, Haifa and other Israeli cities could be immense. Biden would have no choice but to authorize a massive airlift of munitions to Israel — reversing this week’s decision. And the United States might have to even more directly support Israel militarily.

Jake Wallis Simons: The West is proving that Islamist terrorism works

What would be the worst foreign policy message imaginable? There are many contenders, but the frontrunner has to be simply that “terrorism works”. Once this lesson has been learnt, the door will be open to years of violence against us. It’s called appeasement, and history has taught us where it leads.

If you, like me, are concerned by the rise of Islamist extremism around the world, the danger it poses to Jewish communities everywhere, and the way it threatens both the firmness of liberal values and our national security, the inconstancy of Western support for Israel in its mission to destroy Hamas – including here in Britain – should fill you with dread.

Most voters want our country to stand up for democracy, not capitulate to the terrorist forces rising to menace it in the most brutal manner imaginable. Why can’t our leaders express without equivocation that backing Israel in its fight to destroy Hamas completely was, and is, the right thing to do? Why do they stay silent, giving succour to our enemies.

Instead, seven months on from October 7, Western politicians seem intent on pursuing what Ronald Reagan called the “utopian solution of peace without victory”. As he put it during the Cold War: “They call their policy ‘accommodation’ and they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us.” Of course, the opposite is true.

Literally calling for genocide: The campus protesters' literature says that every Jew in Israel is a legitimate target "under international law"

Within one day of the October 7 massacre, the National Students for Justice in Palestine issued a call for a "National Day of Resistance" to be held on October 12. Along with that announcement they issued a "Day of Resistance Toolkit" where give talking points to their members nationwide.

The document says \that every single Israeli Jewish community is considered an "ilegal settlement' And every single Israeli Jew is a "settler,"no matter where in Israel they live.

On the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war, the resistance in Gaza launched a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy which disrupted the very foundation of Zionist settler society....Referred to as Operation Towfan Al-Aqsa (Al-Aqsa Flood), the resistance has taken occupation soldiers hostage, fired thousands of rockets, taken over Israeli military vehicles, and gained control over illegal Israeli settlements....What we are witnessing now is a heightened stage of the Palestinian struggle–through tearing down colonial infrastructure and liberating our colonized land from illegal settlements.

Among those points, in the "Messaging and Framing" section, they say this:

Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law, because they are military assets used to ensure continued control over stolen Palestinian land.

Arab Israelis are never referred to as settlers. Only Israeli Jews are.

The most visible organization behind the campus protests call for the murder of every single Jew in Israel as legitimate "resistance." They make no distinctions: women and children are "settlers" as well and as such they are considered military targets.

All the students who think they are calling fo ran end to genocide are literally calling for the genocide of seven million Jews.

Here is the genocidal call to murder virtually every Jew in the Middle East:

When students are asked why they are protesting, they usually refer the person to the organizers. These are the organizers.

While most student protesters are unaware of this genocidal desire by the organizers, some of them must know a little. "By Any Means Necessary" is not ambiguous. Yet how many people who sincerely care about Palestinians for human rights would quit the campus protests if they knew the truth about what was being demanded and how they justify October 7?

SJP is not using euphemisms here - it says that the worst forms of terrorism are justified. Would the ignorant students at the protests change their minds if they knew this?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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By Daled Amos

In 2012, a video of Norman Finkelstein made the rounds. It was touted as a rebuttal of the BDS movement by Finkelstein, which is odd since he makes it very clear he fully supports BDS.

Here is what Finkelstein had to say:

YouTube provides a transcript of the video, here edited for brevity and clarity:

I've earned my right to speak my mind, and I'm not going to tolerate what I think is silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing.

I mean we have to be honest, and I loathe the disingenuous. They don't want Israel. They think they are being very clever; they call it their "three-tier":
o We want the end of the occupation,
o We want the right of return
o We want equal rights for Arabs in Israel.
And they think they are very clever because they know the result of implementing all three is what, what is the result? You know and I know what is the result. There's no Israel!

Finkelstein's first point is that the BDS movement's claim of using peaceful, non-violent means toward an equitable solution is just a front, a lie. The goal of BDS is not a two-state solution; the goal of BDS is the elimination of the state of Israel,

How successful has the BDS movement been in spreading its false narrative? According to Finkelstein, not very. But he has a solution:

Israel says no, the BDS movement is not really talking about rights. They're talking about how they want to destroy Israel. And, in fact, I think Israel is right; I think that's true. I'm not going to lie. But this kind of duplicity and disingenuous by BDS, "Oh, we're agnostic about Israel." No, you're not agnostic! You don't want it! Then just say it!
But they know full well: If you say it, you don't have a prayer reaching a broad public. Because that's where the public is right now. I support the BDS. But I said it will never reach a broad public until and unless they're explicit on their goal. And their goal has to include the recognition of Israel or it's a nonstarter...They won't mention it because they know it will split the movement. Cause there's a large segment of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel.

The BDS movement's dishonesty is their refusal to admit their goal to eliminate Israel. They know that broad public opinion supports Israel, its defense, and its security. Coming out publicly and calling for Israel's destruction -- back in 2012 -- would have been absurd. As Finkelstein saw it, the only option for the movement was to acknowledge the two-state solution. BDS would have to actually recognize Israel's right to exist. But like Finkelstein, Omar Barghouti -- the face of BDS -- admitted that the two-state solution is "the big white elephant in the room...a return for refugees would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state."

Times have changed.

In 2024, just twelve years after Finkelstein's video, those who seek Israel's destruction don't seem to care about public opinion. They are emboldened, aggressive, and well-funded. They protest openly with their chants, tents, and increasingly violent attacks on Jews both on university campuses and on city streets.

They are more brazen.

But the fact that these protestors don't care about public opinion is not because they are changing it. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week made it clear that US opinion still favors Israel:

A CAPS/Harris survey finds 80% of Americans side with Israel against Hamas. Pollster Mark Penn told the Hill that figure has “not budged” since campus protests began. Seventy-eight percent say Hamas must be removed from running Gaza; 67% say Israel is trying to avoid casualties; a majority in every group 35 and up says a cease-fire should happen only after Hamas has released hostages and been removed from power. Few Americans feel a connection to indulged college students directing invectives at Jews and erecting “intifada halls.”

And where is Norman Finkelstein?

Finkelstein can be found advising the protestors, just like he did when he offered his advice to the BDS movement back in 2012. And he thinks times have changed:

[He] advised the protesters to reconsider the use of slogans that can be used against them. Finkelstein went to Columbia to praise the students for raising public consciousness about the Palestinian cause but he advised them “to adjust to the new political reality that there are large numbers of people, probably a majority, who are potentially receptive to your message.”

Norman Finkelstein at Columbia (YouTube screencap)

Finkelstein is still going around giving advice on how to fine-tune the anti-Israel message. But now, he is no longer concerned with sounding more accepting of Israel and its existence. Contrary to the CAPS/Harris survey, Finkelstein thinks public opinion is now more open to the anti-Israel message than it was twelve years ago. And because of that possibility, he advises that the students eschew chants that advocate outright for the destruction of Israel.

And how was Finkelstein's advice about toning down the chants received?

Once Finkelstein has finished speaking, a protester took the microphone and led a chant of “from the river to the sea”.

A student protestor explained that he respected Finkelstein, but “this is not a top-down movement. We cannot dictate slogans from the top down. We can’t tell people you can say this, you can’t say that."

Based on what we have seen of students who don't know what "from the river to the sea" means, of students who cannot explain what they are protesting for, of non-students who are organizing the protests and left-wing groups providing funding -- we know that the idea that this is a grassroots movement is absurd.

But the degree of violence and willingness to harass Jews on a personal level seem to put this new agenda beyond what Finkelstein can influence.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Ironically, the antisemites are the ones that ensured Israel's Eden Golan makes it into the #Eurovision semifinals

Here is Israel's Eden Golan's performance at the Eurovision semifinals yesterday:

Despite the massive anti-Israel demonstrations outside the venue, she earned a place at the Grand Final on Saturday.

Normally the voting percentages are not revealed, but an Italian broadcaster showed the results, where Israel received what seems to be an astonishing 39% of the vote, far ahead of second place Netherlands with 7%.

What explains this lopsided vote count? Her performance was strong but not that much better than the competition.

Antisemites are saying that this is evidence of corruption, or Israeli hacking of the system. But the real reason is the well-known phenomenon of vote splitting.

In any election with a lot of candidates, the candidates who seem similar tend to split the vote between them and the ones who stand out do best.

Everyone in Europe sees the large anti-Israel demonstrations against Eden Golan. It is a big story.

The demonstrators have made Golan into the most famous and different contestant from the others. Many Europeans who disagree with those trying to subvert a popular song competition will be more likely to vote for the person the protesters hate.

Eden could have recited the phone book and she still would have gotten 20% of the vote because the protesters made her stand out from the competition. Voting for Golan was the only choice for Europeans who were sickened by the haters.

Without the protests, her vote percentage would certainly have been in line with all the other singers, less than 10% of the vote. The antisemites were the ones who made it certain that she would advance, and they very possibly will be the reason she might win the entire competition.

They tried to politicize Eurovision, and they succeeded - causing it to backfire on them.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!