Monday, May 31, 2021

  • Monday, May 31, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

By Dr. Andrew Pessin


 

I weep for the academy.

 

I weep for the Jews.

 

As the Islamic Resistance Movement (better known by its acronym, Hamas) rained thousands of deadly rockets upon Israeli men, women, and children, the academy loudly and voluminously proclaimed its endorsement of this effort to murder as many Jews as possible.

 

Petitions, declarations, statements abounded, from major universities and academic disciplines and student governments in the United States, Canada, Europe—essentially the only remaining places on Earth from which Jews have not yet been nearly entirely ethnically cleansed—signed collectively by thousands of professors and students and alumni, expressing “solidarity” with the Palestinians: Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Stanford, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, CUNY, to name a few. 


It is of course wonderful to express solidarity with suffering peoples. Except when, as is the case here, that expression can only be understood as endorsement of the murder of as many other people as possible.

 

Start with who was firing the rockets.

 

The Hamas charter makes its goals crystal clear. The Islamic Resistance Movement “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine,” “In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife … and wars will break out,” “Israel … will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes,” and “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” No “peace” or “two-state solution” from these folks: they openly seek the destruction of the lone Jewish state in the world, home to half the world’s Jews, and will pursue “strife, wars, and jihad” until they obtain it.

 

And lest you think that goal only indirectly calls for the deaths of the millions of Jews who live there, the charter disabuses you of that notion as well with a quote from the Islamic scriptural tradition: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him'.” This text doesn’t limit the Jew-murder to “Zionists,” as it long precedes the modern State of Israel; nor does it limit the murdering to the Land of Israel.

 

It endorses Jew-murder wherever there may be Jews.

 

Nor is Hamas's desire to murder Jews something vague and abstract.

 

On May 7, just prior to Hamas’s launching the rocket war, Hamas Political Bureau member and former Interior Minister Fathi Hammad gave some concrete and practical suggestions, in rhetoric similar to that used constantly, over decades, by Hamas leaders. On Hamas’s state-run TV station he called on the “People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels.”

 

And if the desire to murder as many Jews as possible weren’t enough, Hamas is also misogynist, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-democracy, and anti-Christian. Not exactly a shining example of the liberal progressive ideal that so dominates the Western academy. 


You would think that such undisputed facts might warrant a word or two of critique from Western academics when such a movement sets out to mass-murder Jews exactly as it constantly says it is going to do.

 

Instead the veritable orgy of condemnation was all the opposite direction.

 

That orgy offered not a single word against the attempted mass murder of Jews but plenty of words against the Jews who sought to defend themselves from the attempt to mass-murder them. The liberal progressive academy responded with a litany of grievances against liberal progressive democratic Israel, in order to justify the anti-liberal-progressive movement’s attempt to mass murder.

 

The profound intellectual failure here matches the profound moral failure, and reveals the simmering Jew-hatred that lies beneath.

 

Let’s just pick out a few points, to illustrate. I’ll focus on the Brown University statement, but similar remarks apply to all of them.

 

As the rockets rained down on Jewish heads, Brown faculty, students, and alumni said, “We condemn Israel's incessant efforts to dispossess and displace 28 Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, in order to replace them with Israeli settlers. The recent attempted expulsions are part of Israel's long-standing project of ethnic cleansing and dispossession.”

 

One could hardly pack more lies and misrepresentations into a short paragraph. For the facts see here, but in brief, a private dispute between landlords and non-rent-paying tenants here becomes a national government effort to dispossess and replace. For the record, the Muslim population of Jerusalem has increased 600% in the nearly six decades since Israel reunified the city. In that same time the Arab population of the West Bank has increased some 350%. Whatever is happening there, “ethnic cleansing” it is not.

 

“We condemn the continued bombardment and murder of at least 145 [as of May 17] Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza, the displacement of some 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza as a result of Israel’s offense, and the systematic and deliberate destruction of Gaza’s infrastructures, already debilitated by a decades long blockade.”

 

No mention here of the reason for the bombardment: Israeli efforts to stop the rockets being fired at them. No distinction between civilians and militants, nor of the documented fact that Israel goes to great lengths and expense to target only militants and minimize civilian casualties. No mention of the hundreds of Hamas rockets that fell short, in Gaza, that certainly produced some or many of those casualties. No evidence for the blood-libelous claim of “systematic and deliberate destruction of infrastructure,” nor of the facts that (1) Hamas rockets damaged the plants that produce electricity for Gaza and (2) Hamas deliberately targeted the Gaza-Israel crossings as humanitarian aid was being transferred into Gaza. Nor mention of the fact that the Israeli blockade restricts only military materials, and that despite the “debilitating blockade,” Gaza is home to fancy hotels, luxury homes and cars, and five-star restaurants, and Hamas had no trouble producing an enormous arsenal of missiles and an enormous network of military tunnels despite the blockade.

 

“We condemn the Israeli police’s ruthless attacks on Muslim worshippers in al-Aqsa Mosque compound with rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas canisters during the holy month of Ramadan.”

 

No mention of the fact that during Ramadan literally hundreds of thousands of Muslims worshipped peacefully at Al-Aqsa, that only in Israel is there anything resembling religious freedom in the Middle East, that the true religious discrimination in Israel is found only in the extensive restrictions forbidding Jews from visiting or worshipping on their holiest site, the Temple Mount. Nor mention of the fact that the police “raid” was only in response to violent riots being perpetrated by the Muslim worshippers, or of the fact that the Mosque was used to store stones and firebombs.

 

“We condemn Israel’s medical apartheid regime. Israel has withheld much-needed COVID-19 vaccines from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza during a deadly pandemic, while administering an internationally lauded and extremely effective vaccination program for the Israeli settlers who reside in illegal settlements throughout the West Bank.”

 

A rival to the earlier paragraph in its lies and misrepresentations, and another blood-libel if ever there was one. For details see here, but in brief: Israel was under no obligation to vaccinate non-citizens (yet nevertheless vaccinated hundreds of thousands of them); the Palestinians never asked for Israeli vaccines or Israeli assistance, and instead, precisely per the Oslo agreements and in accordance with their large degree of autonomy, set out to take care of their own citizens. Israel provided no restrictions on that process and facilitated wherever asked. The only limits were based on the Palestinian ability to pay for vaccines, but no mention is made here of the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-to-slay” policy that incentivizes Palestinians to murder Jews, and whose budget would go far (if not all the way) for enough vaccines for the entire Palestinian population. Nor is mention made here of the fact that Hamas allegedly couldn’t afford vaccines but could somehow afford to produce its enormous arsenal and tunnel network.

 

You get the idea.

 

As of this writing, nearly 1000 Brown faculty, students, and alumni had openly affixed their names to this statement.

 

There is no effort to be “fair,” or “balanced,” or to offer competing perspectives, to even entertain the thought that a conflict that is some hundred-twenty years old, that I prefer to label “the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict” (or IPJAMC) precisely because it involves all those elements (and many more), might just be a little on the complicated side. You would think that academics might be sensitive to complexity, able to handle it, would eschew over-simplification, that where the truth is complicated the positions one takes must be nuanced.

 

Nothing like that to be found here.

 

In fact just the opposite: they openly, enthusiastically embrace the one-sidedness.

 

Don’t just take my word for it. Here is a statement from “Gender Studies Departments In Solidarity With Palestinian Feminist Collective,” whose language mirrors that of many of the other academic statements, signed (as of this writing) not by individuals but by some 150 entire departments, programs, or centers:

 

We do not subscribe to a “both sides” rhetoric that erases the military, economic, media, and global power that Israel has over Palestine. This is not a “conflict” that is too “controversial and complex” to assess. Israel is using violent force, punitive bureaucracy, and the legal system to expel Palestinians from their rightful homes and to remove Palestinian people from their land.

 

Never mind the grave assault on reason here when signatories in “Women’s Studies” and “Gender Studies” departments side with the misogynist, anti-LGBTQ Islamist regime over the democratic state where women can wear what they want and date who they want, serve as Prime Minister, and participate in the only Gay Pride parade in the Middle East.

 

Never mind the grave assault on academic freedom committed here when entire departments pledge themselves to a political position, particularly one where there is indeed “controversy” (their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding). One can only pity the untenured professor, or the potential student, or even staff member who might not share the position the entire department has declared to be the solemn truth. 

 

It’s worse.

 

As Hamas openly pursues its openly declared effort to murder as many Jews as possible, these scholars declare that there is nothing “controversial” here, that there is no “conflict” here, and there are not “two sides” to the issue.

 

That is, no two sides on whether it’s acceptable to attempt to murder as many Jews as possible.

 

With that attitude it is no surprise that the website features the Palestinian flag with a logo of a punching fist with blood dripping from it. (One wonders whether any of their universities have policies against the endorsement of and incitement to violence.)

 

Just to linger on this a moment. Did we mention that the Muslim population of Jerusalem has increased by 600% since Israel reunified the city? Or that the Arab citizens of Israel have more freedoms, and overall greater prosperity, than Arabs in any other Arab country? And this despite the fact that many Palestinians (including Arab citizens of Israel), incentivized by their leaders both in the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, have undertaken a campaign in recent years that has produced literally hundreds of knife attacks and car-rammings, targeting Jews? Not to mention the 40,000 rockets that Hamas has fired since it illegally took over Gaza in 2007 by murdering its Palestinian Authority opponents?

 

Isn’t it possible that there just might be more to this story—some other side?

 

Across universities there are many departments or programs focused on identity studies: Women’s Studies, Race and Gender Studies, LGBTQ+ studies, Black Studies, Palestinian Studies as well, etc. Consistently these programs also openly advocate for the groups they study (a separate problem for the academy, for another day). There are also numerous Jewish Studies and Israel Studies departments. Oddly these programs not only rarely openly advocate for Jews or Israel, but are populated by individuals who openly advocate against their subjects.

 

So it’s also no surprise that some 200 “scholars of Jewish Studies and of Israel studies” jumped on the bandwagon of condemnation of Israel, once Hamas began its most recent campaign of mass Jewish murder.

 

They declare: “We condemn the state violence that the Israeli government and its security forces have been carrying out in Gaza.” So, Jews with rockets raining upon them are condemned for trying to stop the rocket fire.

 

“[We condemn] their evictions of Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.” So, Israel is not allowed to apply its ethnicity-neutral laws in the territory it controls in order to protect landlords from tenants who refuse to pay rent. Or more accurately: Israel must develop ethnic-based laws that prevent only Jewish landlords from having any rights where the tenants are Arabs. Or more accurately still: Arabs must not be required to pay rent to Jews.

 

“[We condemn] their suppression of civilian protests in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Jewish-Arab cities, and Palestinian towns and villages in Israel.” So, Arabs must be allowed to riot without restriction and with impunity. Never mind the dozens of synagogues vandalized, the murders and attempted murders, the smashing and burning of cars, etc.

 

In short: Israel is not permitted to defend itself from mass murder attempts, to enforce its ethnicity-neutral laws, or to maintain public order.  Jews, in other words, are not merely not permitted any form of sovereignty here, but are not permitted even to live here.

 

“We share and hold the pain of Gazans, who have lost and are losing family members, homes, property, businesses, cultural institutions, medical facilities, and civilian infrastructure to Israeli bombings.” There was apparently no space in this long declaration to share and hold the pain of Israelis, who even after having to spend billions of dollars for the Iron Dome and bomb shelters and rocket alert systems as well as extensive systems to minimize civilian casualties on the other side, themselves are murdered and injured and their property destroyed by thousands of rockets, and are individually targeted by knife attacks, car rammings, and lynchings.

 

But there is space enough for them to mention that Zionism—the Jewish movement for self-determination in the ancestral Jewish homeland, that also saved millions of Jewish lives by succeeding—amounts, in their view, “to unjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy, ethnonational segregation, discrimination, and violence against Palestinians.”

 

But not space enough to mention that Israel is one of the most “ethno-nationally” diverse populations on this planet, that it pursues (if not always successfully) equality under the law, that it has been subject to relentless “state violence” from neighboring states and terrorist groups and individual violence from individual Palestinians against individual Jews.

 

And “Jewish supremacy”?

 

Goebbels would be proud.

 

This from “scholars of Jewish and Israel Studies,” as the rockets rain down on Jewish heads. (Potential donors to Jewish and Israel Studies Departments: please take note.)

 

Oddly they were so busy supporting Hamas in this conflict that they completely forgot to condemn Hamas, which openly calls to murder all Jews in the name of establishing Islam “over every inch of Palestine,” for its Islamist supremacy.

 

Whoops.

 

Perhaps one can take some comfort from the fact that, buried in their voluminous screed, is this single line: “We affirm the pain, fear, and anger of Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel who have lost loved ones and homes to unjustifiable and indiscriminate Hamas rockets.” One can hear them telling themselves, “Look, we are being ‘balanced’ because we mention Hamas’s ‘unjustifiable and indiscriminate’ rockets.”

 

Of course they don’t actually condemn the rockets the way they condemn everything about Israel, they just “affirm” the pain, fear, and anger, whatever that means. And whatever comfort one might have taken from that nearly invisible acknowledgment that the rockets are “unjustifiable and indiscriminate” must surely be countered by the fact that the long bulk of the declaration in fact serves to justify those very rockets. One would perhaps take about the same comfort as would a woman who has tragically just been raped being told, “That action was unjustifiable, of course, but, you know, look how you dress.”

 

And indeed one should be equally offended.

 

The dominant ideal in Western universities is that of progressivism, including care and concern for the marginalized and the oppressed. These institutions also pride themselves as being in the business of the pursuit of truth. And yet when the ethnically diverse democratic nation that aspires to those same ideals—that does more to protect and elevate women, LGBTQ+, and religious minorities than any other country in the region, and whose Arab minority serves in all professions, government, and the Supreme Court—is attacked by a religious extremist group that took control of Gaza via an illegal murderous coup and has since ruled it with an iron fist, suppresses all dissent, oppresses women and Christians, persecutes and executes gays, and also openly declares and openly pursues the goal of murdering as many Jews as possible, what happens?

 

These institutions abandon any interest in truth, any interest in their own professed ideals, and see only the “one side,” the anti-progressive side, the one that wants to murder Jews.

 

This isn’t about any particular Israeli policy or behavior.

 

This is about removing Jews from the Land of Israel entirely—and everywhere else.

 

It may indeed be time for Jews to remove themselves from these institutions, where they clearly aren’t welcome.

 

I weep for the academy.

 

And I weep for the Jews.

---

 

 Dr. Andrew Pessin is a professor at Connecticut College. He has written a number of books including The Jewish God Question: What Jewish Thinkers Have Said About God, The Book, The People, and the Land, The 60-Second Philosopher and Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS.

Follow him on twitter @AndrewPessin

For more information about him and his work, visit www.andrewpessin.com







  • Monday, May 31, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
Last week, Gaza UNRWA director Matthias Schmale told Israel's Channel 12 news,  “I’m not a military expert, but I would not dispute that. I also have the impression that there is a huge sophistication in the way the Israeli military struck over the last 11 days, so that’s not my issue. I’ve had many colleagues describe to me that they feel that, in comparison with the 2014 war, this time the strikes felt much more vicious in terms of their impact. So yes, they didn’t hit – with some exceptions – civilian targets, but the viciousness, ferocity of the strikes was heavily felt.””

Uh-oh. 

Schmale made the cardinal mistake of deviating from the groupthink that Israel randomly targets and kills civilians for no reason whatsoever. And when someone goes against the official line, there is hell to pay. 

Hamas - which literally targets civilians and brags about it - condemned Schmale and was soon joined by the other groups in Gaza who send rockets indiscriminately towards Israel (and often Gaza itself.)

Obviously, Schmale spoke the truth. Israel's airstrikes were more precise than in any previous war. The ratio of combatants to civilian casualties was higher than in any urban war in history. It is literally impossible to avoid killing children when the terrorists deliberately hide themselves, their weapons and their command centers among children, which has been proven over and over again. 

Schmale has apologized over and over for telling the truth. His latest linked to the New York Times photo essay of children killed, saying, "Looking at this harrowing documentation, I deeply regret that my comments about the precision of IDF strikes are being misused to justify what cannot be justified. Killing children breaks the rules of war and must be independently investigated. There must not be impunity!"

Which is interesting, because while one actually had to read the article carefully, the NYT did mention that some children were killed by Hamas rockets. It was not "documentation" about how each child was killed; any real investigation would find that most were killed because they were near a legitimate military target and a warning would have caused the terrorist target to get away. Some were killed by Hamas rockets and some were killed by miscalculation by the IDF (an airstrike on tunnels under the Shati camp accidentally knocked down two buildings that Israel didn't anticipate and therefore didn't warn the residents resulting in the deaths of  8 children.)

Even the UN itself admits that most of those killed by Israel were terrorists. Gaza has a population of 2 million people, and if 50,000 of them are members of terrorist organizations, that would mean that indiscriminate bombing would result in a 95% civilian death toll -  not less than 50%. The death toll would be ten times higher

The statistics prove what Schmale said - the airstrikes were carried out with precision.

Two seconds of thinking would also show that if Israel wanted to target children, there would be thousands killed. Two more seconds of thinking would show that Israel not only has no incentive to kill innocents; it has a very powerful disincentive. Five more minutes of research would reveal videos of how the IDF has called off airstrikes when children and other civilians were seen in the area.

But those who are pillorying Schmale don' t care about facts. 

Today, there was a protest in Gaza demanding Schmale be fired. 10,000 people attended. It was organized by UNRWA's own union. The head of the UNRWA Staff Union, Amir al-Mashal, said, “We will not calm down except with the departure of the director of UNRWA operations and his deputy due to their major failures." He added, ridiculously, that Schmale's statement - one of the few times that an UNRWA official actually said the truth - violated UNRWA's "neutrality."

This entire episode proves that journalists, officials and politicians are not interested in facts. They have an agenda and they will only choose to accept the facts that support that agenda.

And no one is willing to admit that the agenda is to demonize Jews.







  • Monday, May 31, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon




The official Palestinian Wafa news agency has a video titled, "Even the cemeteries were not spared from the Israeli bombardment." It shows a couple of large craters in the al-Shuja’iya Cemetery that were hit with Israeli missiles on May 14.

The impression they want to give is that Israel is even attacking the dead.

Back in 2014, the IDF released figures of how often Gaza terrorists shot rockets from civilian areas:

Approximately 260 rockets were fired from schools.
Approximately 160 rockets were fired from religious sites, including mosques.
Approximately 127 rockets were fired from cemeteries.
Approximately 50 rockets were fired from hospitals.
Cemeteries are ideal rocket launching sites, and they are used all the time.

Which makes more sense: Israel shooting cemeteries randomly, or Israel targeting rocket launch sites that happen to be placed in cemeteries?







Sunday, May 30, 2021

  • Sunday, May 30, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,









From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How the international community sought to create an endless Israel-Palestinian war
Ridiculous obsession with Israel at the UN led everything to be warped just to attack Israel from the WHO to Women and Human Rights groups, to UNESCO. Every rule that applies to every country in the world was shifted regarding Israel being singled out. And now human rights groups have done the same regarding accusations of “apartheid.” There is no commonality between Israel’s system and apartheid, but the term had to be changed just to attack Israel. The term “settler state” was shifted from its original meaning relating to the New World states to apply to Israel, a country that is not made up of “settlers.” The supposed “two state” solution has now been tossed aside in favor of what the anti-Israel voices call “one state” and “from the river to the sea.” The accusations that all of Israel is “apartheid” is designed to cater to this alliance of Hamas and the progressive left against Israel. It doesn’t matter what Israel does, just defending itself with Iron Dome is now considered a reason to attack it. Similarly the use of the term “settler” to describe Israel, asserting that this gives it less rights, when numerous other states in North America and other places were created by “settlers.” Only in Israel’s case are migrants and refugees called “settlers.”

Even when Israel tried to do what the international community has asked, withdraw from Gaza, the same community that made sure that failed chaotic Palestinian Authority elections would enable Hamas to take over Gaza. Then they say that Israel still “occupies” Gaza, when Israel left. Hamas is said to have a “right” to “resist occupation” and attack Israel with rockets, and if Israel blockades Hamas then it is said to be evidence of “occupation.” Similarly even though Israel left Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah is permitted to claim it must keep a massive arsenal to “resist” Israel because Israel “occupies” Lebanon, even though it doesn’t. This shows no matter how much Israel withdraws from the “occupation” will never end and the need for “resistance” will never end. The doctrine is “one state” and a “binational” state. Under no circumstance to international organizations say they won’t fund Palestinian groups that use maps showing all of historic Palestine as theirs, and no Israel. Even terms like “’48 Arabs” or “48 lands” are used. To deny the existence of Israel. No other country is subjected to this. No one says that India is “48 lands”.

Only Israel is subjected to non-recognition by numerous countries, based often on religious hatred. Even as the Cold War ended and other disputes ended there was no push by the international community to recognize Israel. It is a conflict that began in 1948 and which many in the international community will use forever. Iran’s regime uses the conflict to excuse spreading chaos in the region and arming illegal extrajudicial groups. Why does Iran threaten Israel? That question is never asked. Why does the regime get to continually use the Palestinian issue to threaten? No other country randomly adopts a cause far away to threaten to destroy some other other country. For instance Burma may be accused of suppressing Rohingya, but Iran or Turkey don’t threaten the country’s destruction. Only with Israel.

The international community has done nothing to try to create peace in the Middle East and prevent the stockpiling of rockets by Hezbollah, Iran’s brazen nuclear program and other issues. As long as these countries say they will “destroy” Israel, they get a pass. If they threaten any other country they are held to account. Even Jewish history is neatly removed, UNESCO declaring Hebron a heritage site but purposely focusing on the Mamluk and Ottoman period to remove any need to mention Jewish heritage in Hebron. The whole of world history changed just to ignore Jewish rights and role in historic Israel.

This is not about Palestinian rights and a state. Because the nature of the argument, the “river to the sea” talk now said at western Universities, it all about ethnic cleansing of Israel. It is the only state in the world the western left leaning progressive will seek to ethnically-cleanse of its diverse population. It’s the only state they say that it has to provide full and equal rights to “all its citizens” and change its flag and anthem, but no other state in the Middle East must do so. It’s the only state where 4,000 rockets can be fired at it without condemnation or even mention of Hamas. It’s the only state where when there is a war there is a huge rise in attacks on Jews all around the world by the same people who claim “anti-Zionism” is not antisemitism. This is the reality in the wake of the Hamas war.


Jake Wallis Simons: How London became a hub for Hamas
It is important to view all this in the context of the bigger picture. This is not a distant problem, confined to a small triangle of land in the Middle East. Jeremy Corbyn and his fellow travellers may call Hamas ‘friends’, but terrorist murderers over there want to carry out terrorist murders over here. Corbyn famously said: ‘The idea that an organisation that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about peace and social justice and political justice should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is a big, big historical mistake.’ About this and many other things, Jeremy Corbyn was, shall we say, incorrect.

The difference between Hamas and Isis does not lie in their intentions and theology so much as their tactics. Isis carries out staged beheadings; Hamas ties people to the back of motorbikes and drags them through the streets. Both lust after a vision of a caliphate. But while Isis goes blasting through the front door, trampling international law and conquering territory, Hamas straps on its suicide belt and rings on the doorbell of democracy. That is the way of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ parent organisation. The theory is simple: by the time you realise what is happening, you’re living in an Islamist state.

The Muslim Brotherhood has had limited success in infiltrating political systems in the Middle East. According to intelligence sources, in recent years it has quietly turned to softer targets in Europe, pushing on the open door that is official tolerance of its ‘political wing’. In Britain and across the continent, analysts say, we are seeing parallel social systems developing that run on Muslim Brotherhood lines. Do British policymakers really believe that giving the group’s ‘political wing’ free rein on our soil has no impact on terrorism, both over there and over here?

It’s high time Whitehall opened its eyes to the terror threat that has been acting with impunity on these shores, and took concrete steps to quash it. After all the death and destruction of recent weeks, that would be a lesson worth learning.


Caroline Glick on RT!: Blood of Jews on Hands of Progressives And Media
While the media blames Israel for their now paused war with Hamas, a top UN official praises Israel's sophistication and precise strikes at Gaza, and then suddenly takes it back. Senior columnist at Israel Hayom, Caroline Glick, joins Steve to discuss.





In the early days of the Gaza operation, Refaat Alareer wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about how hard it is to be a good parent during wartime.

He mentioned that the lost his brother in the 2014 war along with many relatives:
In 2014, during the last war, Israel killed my brother Hamada; it destroyed my apartment when it brought down the family home that housed 40 people. It killed my wife’s grandfather, her brother, her sister and her sister’s three kids. 
Why would Israel target his apartment?

Well, because Refaat Alareer's brother was a Hamas operative, and he was holed up in the apartment with a fellow Hamas terrorist - effectively holding the family hostage as human shields. 

Here is Mohammed (Hamada) Alareer, still memorialized on Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades website:


He was killed along with Musab al-Ajlah, another Hamas terrorist.

If Refaat owned the apartment, as he implies, that means that he was knowingly shielding two Hamas terrorists and his own family members. If anyone is responsible for the deaths of his wife’s grandfather, her brother, her sister and her sister’s three kids, it may be Refaat himself!

Hamada also played the Nahoul the Bee character on a Hamas kid's show, telling children to shoot Jews and smash them.



I don't know if Refaat himself is a Hamas member, but he certainly is a fan. His now-suspended Twitter account included this:



Now he is pretending to be an upright, moral dad who values human lives. But he clearly teaches his daughter to lionize terrorists as well. This is from her Facebook page a few years ago - the photo on top is Refaat posing in front of a cannon in Turkey, and her profile picture is of a masked Al Qassam Brigades terrorist:


Lots more details about this family here.

This is who the New York Times promotes.

On Friday, the same New York Times had a front page photo essay highlighting the photos of children killed in Gaza, a truly grotesque demonization of Israel that is unprecedented. 


Of course every child killed is tragic. But only those that can be blamed on Israel are front-page news for the New York Times. Kids killed by gunfire, in Afghanistan, in Syria - none of them are named, let alone plastered on the front page of the leading newspaper in the West.

In response to this, I tweeted 

I just gave $64 to Friends of the IDF, one dollar for every kid in the @nytimes front page that (despite denials) paints Israel as a child killing entity. 

The IDF does more to save children's lives on BOTH sides than any media, NGO or "pro-Palestinian" group ever has - or will.

My point, which was clear, is that the IDF saves more Gaza kids' lives while defending Israeli kids than the New York Times, or PCHR, or Amnesty, or any of the others whodemonize Israel - combined.  

Refaat is a terrorist fan who teaches his daughter to love Hamas and that Hamas is legally allowed to blow up Jews.   And he writes how wonderful a father he is for the New York Times. Then, today, he called me a fascist who celebrates dead kids - the exact opposite of my post:


He throws in a little antisemitism for good measure, saying that me, a child of Holocaust survivors, is a Nazi. 

 Yes, this Hamas propagandist who fully supports murdering Jewish children in Israel, who supports the antisemitic Hamas charter, who says that suicide bombs are "legitimate resistance" and moral - is calling me a fascist and someone who celebrates killing children.

This isn't even psychological projection: this is a terrorist supporter who is gaslighting the Western world into thinking that Israel is the monster and Hamas is only defending poor Gaza children, the exact opposite of the truth. He knows this and he chooses to propagandize for a terror group.

Refaat Alareer cannot hide his true allegiance for antisemitic, genocidal Hamas. 






  • Sunday, May 30, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
IfNotNow tweeted:





Among the names of "innocent lives" that they are saying Kaddish for  are known terrorists.

For example:

Raed Ibrahim al-Rantisi. 

 Ahmed Hatem al-Mansi


 Moaz Nabil al Zaanin



 Basem Issa - Gaza Brigade Commander for Hamas, which the group admitted was killed early in the fighting:


Sameh Mamlouk, Commander of the Missile Unit Northern Brigade for Islamic Jihad:


Mohammad al-Ata:

Mohammed Jamal Abu Semaan, Hamas field commander:


Mohammed Hassan Abu Semaan:



Usama Jamal al-Zibda - Hamas field commander (his father, also listed, was head of Hamas' rocket program)

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the people IfNotNow consider "innocents." 

Even worse, they give the Jewish honorific "Z'L", "may their memories be a blessing."

IfNotNow mourns terrorists and supports Jew-hating terrorists. Because that it whose side they are on.

This thread also promotes antisemitism, because IfNotNow says that they are complicit "as Jews" for the deaths of Gazans. This gives ideological  support to those who are attacking random Jews in the name of Gaza. (I believe they took that tweet down.)

IfNotNow is a disgusting group of people whose aims and methods are antisemitic while they claim to represent Jews. 

(h/t Joe Truzman for some of these)





  • Sunday, May 30, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


The UN OCHA-OPT summarized the casualties from the Gaza operation:

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), up to 27 May, 256 Palestinians, including 66 children and 40 women were killed, of whom 128 were believed to be civilians. Around 245, including 63 children, were seemingly killed by Israeli Defense Forces.
While these numbers are still quite suspect, it reveals two things that the UN does not want to say explicitly.

One is that they admit that at least 11 Gazans were killed by Hamas rockets. There is practically no one in Gaza actually investigating the sources of each incident; as we've seen, hundreds of Hamas and other terror group rockets landed in Gaza but since the first couple of days no one wants to admit that any of them caused damage. Evidence shows that there was indeed plenty of damage from terrorist group rockets falling short. 

The other is that out of the 245 "seemingly" killed by Israeli airstrikes, 117 (128-11) are believed to be civilians, meaning that  at least 128 were terrorists. (This is a higher number than the totals admitted by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.)

This means that the UN, hardly an objective source when it comes to Israel, is admitting that Israeli airstrikes were startlingly effective, given that the terror targets were often surrounded by their families. 

The UN won't say that, of course. 

As time goes on, more of the people killed will be revealed to be terrorists, and perhaps more will be proven to have been killed by rockets. This happens every time. 







Saturday, May 29, 2021

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: The International Community is Encouraging Hamas to Attack Israel Again — and Again
The role of the international community, and its institutions, is to discourage just the kinds of attacks Hamas routinely engages in. Yet its recent statements and actions clearly incentivize Hamas to repeat its attacks with the assurance that it will win on the court of public opinion even if it loses on the battlefield.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” What the international community is now doing clearly fits that definition. By that definition, if it persists in blaming only Israel or in creating the moral equivalence between morally very different actions, it will become complicit in Hamas’ crimes. It will become responsible for the inevitable civilian deaths that occur when Hamas uses its own human shields to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. The goal of Hamas is to increase civilian casualties. The goal of Israel is to reduce them. Israel makes enormous efforts to warn civilians who are in and around Hamas rockets, but inevitably there will be civilian casualties. The world is outraged when Israel kills Hamas civilians in an effort to protect its civilians. But it said and did little when 4,000 Palestinians — including thousands of children — were killed by Syria during its civil war and when many more thousands were killed by Jordan during Black September. Only when Jews kill Palestinians, even in self-defense, does the international community and media rise up in selective moral indignation. This has to stop.

There are only two ways for Hamas’ repeated strategy to be deterred: either the international community must do the right thing, and condemn Hamas in proportion to its moral responsibility; or Israel must be allowed to continue its self-defense actions until the Hamas military is completely degraded. But the world does neither, it condemns Israel, and it prevents Israel from deterring Hamas’ repetition of its war crimes.

There is no other area in which the international community acts in such a self-defeating, cynical and, I must add, antisemitic manner. Yes, antisemitic. There is no other explanation for why Israel is singled out for this special treatment. There are many, many more unjustified civilian deaths in other parts of the world in which battles are taking place. Yet the world’s obsession is on Israel, precisely because it is the nation state of the Jewish people. In the face of growing antisemitism throughout the world, the time has come for the international community to apply a single standard to Israel and to stop encouraging Iran and its proxy Hamas to persist in its efforts to end the existence of what it calls the “the little Satan.”
JPost Editorial: Launching Gaza war probe is proof of UN bias against Israel
The UN decision is a boon to terrorism. Hamas, as expected, welcomed the decision and said that its actions – the firing of over 4,000 rockets into Israel, constituted “legitimate resistance.”

A look at the countries which supported the opening of the war crimes probe is quite telling. There is China, Russia, Pakistan, Cuba, Libya and Venezuela. The fact that these countries even have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council is itself absurd, let alone them standing suddenly on the side of human rights against Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.

What these countries fail to remember is that Operation Guardian of Walls was the most accurate and precise military operation in world history. Israel dropped around 1,000 bombs on 1,000 targets. Any other military doing so would have killed thousands of people. In this case, Israel went to amazing lengths to safeguard civilian life and while every life lost is tragic and regretful, never before has a military carried out such precise airstrikes like Israel just did.

It is a testament to the investment the IDF makes in sparing the lives of civilians in the Gaza Strip, which includes phone calls to residents of homes and buildings before they are bombed as well the use of the roof-knocking tactic. No other military in the world goes to these lengths to save the lives of its enemy.

And this also has to be said: The side that is responsible for the deaths in Gaza is not Israel but Hamas. Yes, it is an Israeli plane dropping an Israeli bomb, but it is Hamas that purposely stores its weapons in civilian homes and launches its rockets from office buildings indiscriminately into Israeli population centers.

Doing so is the true war crime. It is also part of Hamas’s strategy. It embeds its weapons and installations in civilian areas since it knows Israel will retaliate to defend itself and it knows that the world will then criticize Israel and open war crimes probes like the one launched on Thursday.

By opening the probe, the UN is standing with Hamas and handing a victory to terrorism. This is the real problem and it needs to be fixed.


Maher: It’s Not Progressive to Side with Hamas, I’m Frustrated ‘There Was No One on Liberal Media’ to Defend Israel
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that he was frustrated during the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas “because there was no one on liberal media to defend Israel,” and that he’s amazed that “progressives think that they’re being progressive” by siding with Hamas and “would run screaming to Tel Aviv if they had to live in Gaza for one day.”

Maher said, “One of the frustrations I had while I was off is that I was watching this war go on in Israel…and it was frustrating to me because there was no one on liberal media to defend Israel, really. We’ve become this country now where we’re kind of one-sided on this issue.”

He later added, “[A]s far as Gaza goes, it’s amazing to me that the progressives think that they’re being progressive by taking that side of it, the Bella Hadids of the world, these influencers. I just want to say, in February of this year, a Hamas court ruled that an unmarried woman cannot travel in Gaza without the permission of a male guardian, that’s where the progressives are? Bella Hadid and her friends would run screaming to Tel Aviv if they had to live in Gaza for one day.”


Friday, May 28, 2021

From Ian:

Rabbi David Wolpe (NYTs): The Jewish History of Israel Is Over 3,000 Years Old. That’s Why It’s Complicated.
My first visit to Israel was when I was 12 years old. The group was led by my father, a rabbi from Philadelphia. We had been invited to participate in an archaeological dig near the city of Beit Shean, in the country’s north, near the Jordan River Valley. Soon after we arrived, one of my friends happened upon a pottery shard, really an ostracon, a fragment with writing on it. The archaeologist on site said something to him in Hebrew. My father translated: “He said you are the first person to hold that in over 2,000 years.”

Such shocks of antiquity are not rare in Israel. In 1880, archaeologists discovered a Hebrew text carved in stone in a tunnel under Jerusalem. It recounted how workers had chiseled from opposite ends of the ancient city; as they grew closer the sounds of stone cutting grew louder until they met in the middle. The tunnel is believed to be dated from the time of Hezekiah, a king who reigned 715-687 B.C., almost 3,000 years ago and 100 years before the Temple was razed, and Jews were sent into the Babylonian exile. Hezekiah ordered the tunnel’s construction to bring water from outside the city walls into the city. Jerusalem may be a city of sanctity and reverence, but its citizens needed water as much as they did God.

That intersection of the holy and mundane remains. Over the past month of crisis, turmoil, protest and death we have been inevitably captured by the situation of the present. But part of the intractability of the conflict in the Middle East is that the Jewish relationship to Israel did not begin in 1948. Our history here, of both pain and holiness, stretches back dozens of generations.

Our ancient historical markers, scattered throughout this land, are the tactile expression of Jewish memory, and an ancient spiritual yearning. For thousands of years, Jews in the Diaspora would leave a corner of their homes unpainted, to remind themselves that they were not home. They prayed in the direction of Jerusalem. They knew the geography of a land they would never see, often far better than the country in which they lived. They recited prayers for weather — in services during the winter, we yearn for rain or dew — not to help the harvests outside Vilnius or Paris or Fez, but for those in Israel, since we expected at any moment to return.

The Bible depicts an ideal land, one flowing with milk and honey. Yet Israel has always been one thing in dreams and another in the tumult of everyday life. When the five books of the Torah end, the Israelites are still in the wilderness and Moses, our leader out of Egypt, has been denied the promised land. The message is manifest: The perfect place does not yet exist, and you must enter a messy and contested land armed with the vision God has given you. Jews conclude the Passover Seder with “next year in Jerusalem.” Yet if one has the Seder in Jerusalem, the conclusion is not “next year here.” Rather, it is “next year in a rebuilt Jerusalem” — a city that reflects the ideals and aspirations of sages and prophets, one marked with piety and plenty.

For many Jews, that vision is as relevant today as it was in ancient Israel. That means the past, present and future of the land is not just an argument about settlements or structures alone, but also an ideal of a place of safety, a heavenly city on earth, one that we continue to strive and pray for, especially after the violence of these last few weeks.
Melanie Phillips: The murderous doctrine of moral equivalence
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterpart, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, visited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week to offer help in building on the ceasefire with Hamas.

Both Blinken and Raab declared themselves committed to Israel’s security. Both governments have also condemned the antisemitism running rampant in their countries.

These are vapid bromides. For neither the British government nor the Biden administration acknowledges that the war against Israel and the war against the Jewish diaspora form an indivisible line of bigotry, which they themselves unwittingly help maintain.

The tsunami of antisemitism continues to inundate the west. In America, antisemitic acts reportedly rose by 80 percent this month, and in Britain by at least 500 percent. More than 17,000 variations of “Hitler was right” have recently appeared on Twitter.

In Britain, after the actors’ union Equity called on its members to join last Saturday’s anti-Israel march in London at which demonstrators burned Israeli flags and displayed antisemitic slogans, Jewish actors have said they are beginning to hide their Stars of David at auditions.

There are many non-Jews who are as horrified as they are bewildered by this evil that has overtaken their society. It is indeed astounding in its scope and scale.

For it is effectively a takeover of millions of western minds by Soviet-style brainwashing, in which the Palestinian perpetrators of murderous, exterminatory antisemitism are regarded as oppressed and dispossessed while their Israeli victims are labeled Nazi oppressors — and diaspora Jews are accused of backing “pogroms” in “Palestine”.

This madness urgently needs to be fought by those who help make the cultural weather. It’s not enough for politicians to promise support to a Jewish community that’s under siege. They need to call out the broadcasters and newspapers peddling Palestinian propaganda and incitement in the guise of journalism.

They need to tell people that Israel stands for law, justice and human rights while the Palestinians stand for their negation.
Caroline Glick: Google, Amazon, and Israel in the New America
The polarization of opinion on Israel that we are witnessing in American politics between Republicans who support Israel and Democrats who oppose Israel, is an expression of a much larger division within American society. The heartbreaking but undeniable fact is that today you can't talk about "America" as a single political entity.

Today there are two Americas, and they cannot abide by one another. One America – traditional America – loves Israel and America. The other America – the New America – hates Israel and doesn't think much of America, either.

Traditional America believes that the US brought the promise of liberty to the world and that even though it is far from perfect, the United States is the greatest country in human history. In the eyes of the citizens of Traditional America, Israel is a kindred nation and the US's best friend and most valued ally in the Middle East.

New America, in contrast, believes that America was born in the sin of slavery. New Americans insist America will remain evil and an object of scorn at home and abroad so long it refuses to exchange its values of liberty, capitalism, equal opportunity, and patriotism with the values of racialism and equity, socialism, equality of outcomes, and globalization. For New Americans, just as the US was born in the sin of white supremacy so Israel was born in the sin of Zionism. In New America, Israel will have no right to exist so long as it clings to its Jewish national identity, refusing to become a "state of all its citizens."

New America's power isn't limited to its control over the White House and Congress. It also controls much of corporate America. Under the slogan, "Stakeholder Capitalism," corporate conglomerates whose leaders are New Americans use their economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America. We saw stakeholder capitalism at work in March following the Georgia statehouse's passage of a law requiring voters to present identification at polling places. Major League Baseball, Coca Cola, Delta and American Airlines among others announced that they would boycott the state, denying jobs to thousands of Georgians in retaliation.

Silicon Valley is the Ground Zero of Stakeholder Capitalism. Its denizens are the loudest and most powerful proponents of using technological and economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America.

Microsoft and Oracle are appealing the Nimbus tender award. They are basing their appeals on what they describe as technical and other flaws in the tender process. Israel should view their appeals as an opportunity to reverse course.

In light of New America's hostility towards Israel generally, and given the proven power of Google and Amazon employees and their expressed antagonism towards Israel, the Finance Ministry should reconsider the tender award. Technical considerations aside, the decision to grant Google and Amazon- xclusive control over the State of Israel's computer data did not give sufficient weight to all the relevant variables.
  • Friday, May 28, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
This is truly a horrifying story of how easily liberals get bullied by Israel hating antisemites.

The chancellor of Rutgers University issued a statement against antisemitism. But of course, it "All Lives Mattered" Jews, and it ended up being a statement against any discrimination, past or present, and Jews are just one tiny example.

Excerpts:

Dear Rutgers–New Brunswick Community,

We are saddened by and greatly concerned about the sharp rise in hostile sentiments and anti-Semitic violence in the United States. Recent incidents of hate directed toward Jewish members of our community again remind us of what history has to teach us. Tragically, in the last century alone, acts of prejudice and hatred left unaddressed have served as the foundation for many atrocities against targeted groups around the world.   

Last year’s murder of George Floyd brought into sharp focus the racial injustices that continue to plague our country, and over the past year there has been attacks on our Asian American Pacific Islander citizens, the spaces of Indigenous peoples defiled, and targeted oppression and other assaults against Hindus and Muslims.

Although it has been nearly two decades since the U.S. Congress approved the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, the upward trend of anti-Semitism continues. We have also been witnesses to the increasing violence between Israeli forces and Hamas in the Middle East leading to the deaths of children and adults and mass displacement of citizens in the Gaza region and the loss of lives in Israel. 

...
Therefore:

We call out all forms of bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, xenophobia, and oppression, in whatever ways they may be expressed.
We condemn any vile acts of hate against members of our community designed to generate fear, devalue, demonize, or dehumanize. 
We embrace and affirm the value and dignity of each member of our Rutgers community regardless of religion, race, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender, and ability. 

Sincerely,

Christopher J. Molloy
Chancellor

Francine Conway
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Research and Academic Affairs
This is already offensive to Jews. Instead of tackling antisemitism, Rutgers threw antisemitism into a mix of all bigotries. As we've seen, when that happens, Jewish safety becomes the lowest priority - and Jews being attacked by other members of "victim" groups are presumed to be guilty themselves by the sick algebra of victimhood scoring.

No one would ever issue a statement on racism and throw in anti-Asian, anti-Jewish and anti-LGBTQ bigotries. Everyone saw how offended Black people were to "all lives matter."  But with attacks on Jews, it is practically required to mention other victim groups, so no one could possibly think that the person making the statement is a Jew-lover. Or a Zionist. Or something. 

But this awful statement, watered down into a summary that didn't even mention Jews, was still too much about Jews for Jew-haters who have made a career out being outraged and bullying others with their crazed displays of anger. 

It appears that Molloy reacted to an Instagram post by Students for Justice in Palestine, which is about as much of a hate group as exists on cmpuses today. He completely caved within a single day to the pressure from haters who were against a condemnation of antisemitism. 

He wrote this disgusting, abject apology for not being inclusive of the Jew-haters in a message about antisemitism:



Dear Members of the Rutgers–New Brunswick Community,

We are writing today as a follow-up to the message sent on Wednesday, May 26th to the university community. We understand that intent and impact are two different things, and while the intent of our message was to affirm that Rutgers–New Brunswick is a place where all identities can feel validated and supported, the impact of the message fell short of that intention. In hindsight, it is clear to us that the message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members. We sincerely apologize for the hurt that this message has caused.

Um, who has been attacking Jews lately? 

This is like apologizing to white people - who are the victims of anti-white attacks - after denouncing racist attacks.   

It is infuriating.


Rutgers University–New Brunswick is a community that is enriched by our vibrant diversity. However, our diversity must be supported by equity, inclusion, antiracism, and the condemnation of all forms of bigotry and hatred, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. As we grow in our personal and institutional understanding, we will take the lesson learned here to heart, and pledge our commitment to doing better. We will work to regain your trust, and make sure that our communications going forward are much more sensitive and balanced.

Our goal of creating a beloved community will not be easy, and while we may make mistakes along the way; we hope we can all learn from them as we continue this vital work together.

The only lesson Molloy learned is that it is better to cave to the demands of antisemites than to show solidarity with the victims of antisemitism. 

Molloy didn't even show enough respect for the Jewish community to consult with them before sending out this letter that threw them under the bus.

This is not the first time Molloy pissed on Jews. Here's his statement after Jews were murdered in Jersey City - and the entire statement doesn't mention the word "Jew" or even "antisemitism" once:



Jews at Rutgers must immediately show that the Rutgers administration has completely lost their trust, and that their feelings were just stomped upon.

What self-respecting Jew would send their kids to Rutgers anymore after this fiasco?  



UPDATE: Rutgers took down both posts and replaced them with a post denying that they apologized for condemning antisemitism. I fixed the links above to go to archive sites with the original posts.





From Ian:

The People of Israel Live!
Now that Hamas and Israel have entered into a ceasefire, everyone seems obsessed with who won and who lost. The Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy has just emailed me telling me that, “Since war is about inflicting pain, winning can be evaluated by two separate pain parameters” and claiming that Israel won on that basis.

I’m not convinced that this description of war passes muster. It wouldn’t with Carl von Clausewitz, the soldier whose book On War defined the study of warfare from 1832 right up to today. He calls war “an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will”. A more philosophical ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, claimed that, “to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”

But what if life is war and enemies are eternal? What if your life consists of constant struggle against adversity to succeed in your own goals? By what measure can we decide whether an individual skirmish is a success?

This makes the articles I’m seeing about who “won” the latest round of violence rather galling. No one won. There was no war and there is no peace.

The latest flare up between the two sides is almost perfect as a metaphor for the Jewish experience. After having no peace, we fought. The fighting finished and now Jews, within Israel and without, have to wait in fear for the next round of fighting.

Talk of winning and losing belongs to the same mode of thinking as those who talk about a “solution” to the conflict as if it will all just go away once a piece of paper is signed or a magic wand is waved.
People are accusing Israel of genocide. These human rights lawyers beg to differ
According to the United Nations, “genocide” consists of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” That can include killing members of the group, inflicting serious bodily harm on them, preventing births, forcibly transferring their children or creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Some Palestinian advocates say that definition applies in Gaza. Noura Erakat, a human rights lawyer and assistant professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, wrote a Twitter thread to her 108,000 followers last week explaining why she believes Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and trying “to eliminate their presence & destroy their nation.”

“The whole world stays silent and turns a blind eye to the genocide of whole Palestinian families,” Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki said at the United Nations last week. Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan walked out of Al-Maliki’s speech.

Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American international human rights attorney, told JTA that she used to avoid describing Israeli actions as genocide because when she did, some people “will automatically just have this visceral reaction that shuts you out instead of actually listening to you” because the word is so strong and because, for Jews, it evokes the Holocaust.

Now, however, she is reconsidering. Arraf said that given the ongoing Israeli oppression of Palestinians that she observes, the question of whether Israel is committing genocide deserves to be investigated.

“I don’t think it’s a secret that Israel does not want the Palestinian people there,” she said. “The actions are so vicious and brutal that it’s almost wrong to shy away from calling it what it seems like it is now. It might cause some people to close it off or blow it off or become just defensive, but I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a sufficient reason to hold back from calling it what it looks like.”

Pro-Palestinian activists have accused Israel of genocide before — and sparked backlash from Jewish groups and others. During the 2014 Gaza war, Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American professor, lost a tenured position he had been hired for at the University of Illinois following a series of critical tweets about Israel, including one that said, “The word ‘genocide’ is more germane the more news we hear.”
JINSA: Gaza Proves that Iran’s Next War on Israel Will Be Far Bloodier
At a minimum, that means making clear to Iran and its regional terror network that this latest conflict in Gaza has only strengthened the U.S.-Israel alliance. For sure, doing that won’t be easy in the face of the growing power of the Democratic Party’s increasingly strident progressive wing, which has been harshly critical of Israel’s policies.

But it’s essential. Biden and those embattled remnants of his party in Congress who remain faithful to the muscular internationalism championed by the likes of President Harry S. Truman and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson need to push back against the rising anti-Israel chorus among progressives. They’ll have the overwhelming support of their Republican colleagues if they do so, as well as the majority of average Americans who still intuitively grasp the difference between a democratic ally exercising its inherent right to self-defense and a terrorist group dedicated to its destruction. Among other things, that United States support should include an announcement from the administration on the immediate resupply and strengthening of Israel’s life-saving missile defense system, its inventory of precision-guided munitions and bunker-busting bombs, and its air power. The president’s statement last week declaring his “full support” to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor missiles was an excellent start.

But it also means that President Biden needs urgently to reassess the wisdom of his administration’s headlong rush back into the Iran nuclear deal. As surely as night follows day, a resumption of the 2015 deal—with its requirements for massive American sanctions relief—will result in tens of billions of dollars being funneled to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their terrorist proxies not only in Hezbollah and Hamas, but among Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq as well.

There’s no polite way to say this: Especially after the tragic scenes that we’ve just witnessed in Gaza, it would border on strategic madness for the United States to barrel ahead on a course that is virtually guaranteed to underwrite Iran’s next war against Israel and help the Revolutionary Guards and their terrorist foreign legion inflict levels of destruction on U.S. allies and interests that will make the awfulness of the recent Gaza war seem like a walk in the park by comparison.


Former Ambassador David Friedman: ‘Trump administration would have given Israel free reign to defend itself’
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was dispatched to Israel by U.S. President Joe Biden this week in the direct aftermath of an acute conflagration highlighted by 11 days of indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas on Israeli population centers and pinpoint Israeli airstrikes on Hamas installations in Gaza in retaliation.

Blinken attempted to apply significant pressure on Israel behind closed doors in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority, which were suspended during the Trump administration, were officially restored.

The visit confirmed fears in Jerusalem that Washington’s policy would now be essentially reversed, following four of the friendliest years ever between a U.S. administration and Israel. The United States intends to renew funding to the P.A. and reopen a shuttered consulate in Jerusalem dealing exclusively with Palestinian affairs. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly rejected the prospect of opening up a Palestinian office in Israel’s capital.

In addition, Blinken updated Netanyahu on U.S. intentions to negotiate towards a new Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Former President Donald Trump had pulled out of the deal in May 2018 and set about to level the harshest sanctions to date on any nation against the Islamic Republic.

On the heels of Blinken’s visit, JNS sat down with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, a trusted adviser of Trump, and one of the key architects of the administration’s Mideast policies.
  • Friday, May 28, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


Felesteen reports that a Palestinian woman sent all of her money and jewelry to Mohammed Dief, the head of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades.

She attached a letter, where she wrote that this was her contribution to the manufacture of rockets that crush Israel, or, as she put it, the "plundering entity."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)






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