Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 06, 2023

08/06 Links: Book claiming Israel harvests Palestinian organs taught in Princeton humanities course; The New Yorker, NYT, Foreign Policy are whitewashing Palestinian terror

From Ian:

Book claiming Israel harvests Palestinian organs taught in Princeton humanities course

Princeton University has included in a syllabus for a fall semester course: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South, a book written by Jsbir Puar called The Healing Humanities: The Right to Maim in which she claims the IDF was harvesting the organs of Palestinians.

In the summary of the book on which the course is based, Israel is allegedly “supplementing its right to kill with the right to maim.” The book itself claims that Israel over the years has enacted a policy of targeted shooting of Palestinians "to maim, not to kill.”

“The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have shown a demonstrable pattern over decades of sparing life, of shooting to maim rather than to kill. This is ostensibly a humanitarian practice, leaving many civilians ‘permanently disabled’ in an occupied territory of destroyed hospitals, rationed medical supplies, and scarce resources," adding the policy shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations.

The book caused controversy when it was released in 2017, and its author, Prof. Jasbir Puar, who serves as the head of the Gender Studies program at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has continuously accused Israel of ethnic cleansing Palestinians during her lectures to students around the country.

She also claimed that the bodies of Palestinian children “were mined for organs for scientific research,” by the military, and said that during her research on the effects of “maiming” in Gaza, many Palestinians believed the bodies of children who died during the conflict were used for that purpose by the IDF.

“Several scholars have been tracing maiming as a deliberate biopolitical tactic on the part of Israel in the occupation of Palestine,” Puar said during her talk on ecological feminism in a panel at Dartmouth University.

“Medical personnel in both Gaza and the West Bank reported mounting evidence of shoot-to-cripple practices of the IDF, more accurately called the Israeli Occupation Forces, noting an increasing shift from using traditional means such as tear gas and rubber bullets, rubber-coated metal to disperse crowds to firing at knees, femurs or aiming for their vital organs,” she added.

Princeton University’s course is taught by anthropologist Satyel Larson from the university’s Near Eastern Studies Department, and its reading materials were carefully reviewed and approved by the faculty.

Academics criticized the course content and said that it provided "zero educational value." "It just gives a lot of third-rate professors a platform from which to indoctrinate students into left-wing ideologies," said Professor Jason Hill from the University of DePaul in Chicago.

The New Yorker, NYT, Foreign Policy are whitewashing Palestinian terror

Palestinian Authority (PA) official Hussein al-Sheikh is “tall and affable,” according to a glowing feature article about him in the new issue of Foreign Policy. Al-Sheikh, a top candidate in the running to succeed PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, “wears finely tailored suits;” he’s “pragmatic;” and he “urges cooperating, not clashing, with Israel,” the authors asserted.

But they forgot to mention one little fact. He’s also a murderer of defenseless women and children.

It’s not as if the authors didn’t have enough space to fully explain al-Sheikh’s background. The article, by Adam Rasgon of The New Yorker and Aaron Boxerman of The New York Times, is more than 5,700 words long. That’s about seven times the length of this op-ed.

And it’s not as if Rasgon and Boxerman didn’t consider al-Sheikh’s legal history relevant. They did summarize it, in paragraph 27. But they were very selective about what they mentioned.

In 1978, al-Sheikh “was sentenced to 11 years in prison after he joined a cell involved in attacks against Israelis, although he said he didn’t commit acts of violence,” the authors wrote. They quickly followed that with an anecdote about how al-Sheikh “tears up” as he recalls how his sentencing “broke his father’s heart.”

Now, here’s the part that Rasgon and Boxerman left out.

On Thursday morning, March 21, 2002, a Palestinian suicide bomber struck on King George Street, in the heart of Jerusalem. Five people were murdered, and more than 100 were injured. Four of the five were a young couple, Gadi and Tzipi Shemesh, and their unborn twin daughters.

A number of Americans were among the wounded. The force of the explosion hurled US citizen Alan Bauer 20 feet into the air. Two screws that were packed into the bomb ripped through his left arm. His seven-year-old son, Jonathan, suffered severe shrapnel wounds and fell into a coma. Jonathan underwent numerous operations to remove nails and screws from his head, including one that was lodged in his brain. He was left with permanent injuries.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is the military arm of the Fatah movement headed by PA chairman Abbas, openly claimed responsibility for the bombing. In fact, it was the King George Street bombing that persuaded the US State Department to finally put the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade on its official list of terrorist groups.

Interview With Rick Richman About His New Book -- "And None Shall Make Them Afraid" (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Rick Richman's new book, And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel, describes, "how Zionism, supported by Americanism, created a modern miracle--told through the little-known stories of eight individuals who collectively changed history." They are Theodor Herzl, Louis Brandeis, Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Golda Meir, Ben Hecht, Abba Eban and Ron Dermer.

The author is a resident scholar at American Jewish University in Los Angeles and has written for Commentary, Mosaic, the New York Sun, the Jewish Journal, Jewish Press and other publications. He is also the author of Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler.

Rick Richman

I recently had the opportunity to interview him about his new book. The answers have been slightly edited for clarity,

You write that your book "seeks to bring some seminal Jewish and American stories back into common knowledge, so they can do some work in the world." What "work" do you think knowledge of these figures can accomplish?

Both Jewish and American historians have recognized that the function of history extends beyond scholarly study. Columbia University professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, the preeminent Jewish historian of the 20th century, emphasized the "value of Jewish history itself, not for the scholar, but for the Jewish people." Hillsdale College professor Wilfred McClay has similarly stressed the importance of American history to the American people: “We have to learn, or relearn, our story. In so doing we will discover that we are also learning about ourselves, and about all the things of which ordinary people are capable -- even us.”

The stories in my book, once they are learned or relearned, can inspire contemporary Jews and Americans to recognize more deeply the priceless heritage they have, the importance of preserving it, and the impact that individuals can have on history.

What is the "mystery" that surrounds Theodor Herzl?

It is commonly believed that the impetus for Herzl’s endorsement of Zionism was his experience covering the trial and punishment of Alfred Dreyfus for treason in France in 1894-95. But that belief is unsupported by the articles about the trial that Herzl wrote at the time, as well as his references to it in his private diaries. Herzl’s inspiration came from a different source, and Herzl himself did not completely understand how it came to him. In my book, I try to give readers the facts relating to Herzl’s experience and thus give them the chance to provide their own answer to that question.

You indicate in your Introduction that the life of Chaim Weizmann reveals not only the roots of Israel, but also the history of the Arabs in the 20th century as well. How so?

In 1918, a few months after Britain’s issuance of the Balfour Declaration endorsing a Jewish national home in Palestine, Weizmann made an arduous trip to the plains of Transjordan to meet with Emir Faisal, the commander in chief of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, in Faisal’s tent. There they forged a mutual understanding of the national futures for their respective peoples, at a time when there was neither an Arab nor a Jewish state anywhere in the world. They thought their respective national struggles were complementary, not antagonistic. What happened to Weizmann and Faisal in the following decades illustrates the lost opportunity the Arabs of Palestine had, from the very beginning, to realize a national future for themselves like the one the Jews did.

In contrast to the claims of antisemites today that Zionism creates dual loyalty in American Jews, Brandeis contended that "to be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists." What did he mean by that?

Brandeis concluded that the essence of Americanism was freedom and democracy, and that Americans thus had a duty to facilitate the achievement of those goals for all peoples. Zionism was the movement to establish a free and democratic state in the land where the Jewish state had once stood for centuries, two millennia before. In supporting Zionism, American Jews were thus supporting a quintessential American goal.

One of the important successes of Zionist leaders resulted from their meetings with world leaders. What influence did Jabotinsky have by his appearance before the Peel Commission and his meeting with Churchill?

Jabotinsky’s speech before the Peel Commission in 1937 was, in his opinion, the best he ever made, and it had an obvious impact on those who heard it (or read about it in the many press reports that followed). Churchill used some of the facts that Jabotinsky conveyed in that speech to write op-eds supporting the right of the Jews to the national home which had been promised to them by the British in the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the League of Nations in its Mandate for Palestine in 1922. Jabotinsky’s 1937 speech is one of the most remarkable in modern Jewish history, and ought to be more widely known and studied.

The events of the Evian Conference were a lesson to Golda Meir. What lessons did she learn from attending that conference?

Watching the failure of the 32 nations that attended the Evian Conference, called ostensibly to help the Jews in their desperate situations in Germany and Austria, to do anything at all to help the Jews, Golda Meir learned that the manifest justice of one’s situation was not enough to persuade other nations to do something to help, and that ultimately the Jews would have to depend on themselves.

The Jewish establishment was a nemesis of Hecht during his spearheading efforts both to save Jews in Europe fleeing from the Holocaust and to aid the re-establishment of the Jewish State. What caused that friction?

Ben Hecht was unafraid to call attention to the dire situation of the Jews, while the Jewish leadership at the time thought doing so would be “special pleading,” or would embarrass FDR, or might otherwise cause trouble for the Jews. They were a study in timidity at a time of the greatest modern existential threat to the Jewish people.

Are there any other figures that you considered writing about in general or including in your book, but did not? If so, why not? Are there biographies that you might consider writing in the future? Who and why?

I thought about writing about Jacob de Haas, who was Herzl’s earliest supporter in Britain and who moved to America at Herzl’s suggestion to support Zionism there. It was de Haas, more than any other individual, who educated Louis Brandeis about Zionism and made him a key supporter of it. De Haas is little known today, but he was a key person in the story of both Herzl and Brandeis, and he deserves to be recalled. He is also still another example of the fact that a single individual can have a significant impact on history.

I am also interested in the unsung contributions that the spouses of some of the figures in my book made – Paula Ben-Gurion, Vera Weizmann, Joanna Jabotinsky and Morris Meyerson (Golda Meir’s husband). In supporting their spouses and their families, often alone, while their historic spouses spent so much of their time in the public arena, they made important contributions that also deserve to be recalled.

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!

The World Assembly for Islamic Awakening, an Iranian-based group, issued a statement about the deadly clashes in the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon.

Of course, they blame Israel.

The armed clashes in the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh, located in southern Lebanon, are considered a bitter event, behind which the seditious hand of the criminal Zionist entity is clearly evident.

Today, the Zionist terrorist entity is going through the most critical stages of its life, and the depth and scope of its existential and identity crises are increasing every day. It has been ravaged by internal tensions and divisions of the army, intelligence and security, and political tendencies, and so that its weakness has intensified even against the Palestinian resistance factions equipped with the least military capabilities.

During the battles of the past two years, this entity's machine of war, terrorism and violence has been paralyzed and defeated, despite its advanced weapons and powerful missile and defense systems, so that it cannot achieve victory even in a war with the smallest factions of the Palestinian resistance.

The field and political results of the aforementioned circumstances clearly show that the Zionist apartheid entity is now in a state of destruction and collapse.

In order to escape from the dilemma experienced by the Zionist occupation entity, the leaders of this entity resorted, with the support of America, to create discord within the Palestinian resistance factions, among which are the recent events in Ain al-Hilweh camp, which is one of its dimensions.

By fueling the clashes in Ain al-Hilweh, the Zionist occupation seeks to achieve three main goals, firstly diverting public opinion from the critical situation of this entity at home, and as a result gaining time to get out of the existing crisis, and secondly creating conflict within the Palestinian Islamic resistance factions and focusing them on internal tensions and war sectarianism, and thirdly, the escalation of the internal situation in Lebanon, as a result of which it prevented the formation of the government and tarnished the image and reputation of Hezbollah.

Palestinians kill Palestinians, and they blame the Jews.

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!

08/05 Links: Palestinian terrorist kills Israeli in Tel Aviv attack; Iran, Russia Evade Sanctions; Biden Administration 'Funding Both Sides of Ukraine War'

From Ian:

Palestinian terrorist kills Israeli in Tel Aviv attack

An Israeli man was killed on Saturday evening in a Palestinian shooting attack in the heart of Tel Aviv.

Two municipal patrol officers attempted to question the terrorist, who was behaving suspiciously, at the corner of Montefiore and Allenby streets. He ignored their overtures, drew a handgun from his bag and opened fire on them as they got off their motorcycles.

The victim, named as Chen Amir, 42, was a municipal security guard who had engaged the terrorist. The second officer then chased after the terrorist and shot and killed him.

Amir was evacuated to the nearby Ichilov Hospital, where he died. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Shabtai identified the attacker as a Palestinian from Rummanah in the Jenin area in northern Samaria who was in possession of a “martyrdom” letter. The commissioner said the guards prevented a large terrorist attack.

Security services were investigating whether the Palestinian assailant had accomplices and how he entered Israel proper.

According to the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), the terrorist, Kamel Abu Bakr, 22, was a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who had been hiding in the Jenin refugee camp for the last six months.

He did not have an entry permit into Israel proper due to this affiliation.

Tel Aviv security officers hailed for ‘thwarting a much graver attack’

Israeli leaders on Saturday hailed a pair of Tel Aviv municipality security officers who confronted a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv, one of whom was critically wounded while doing so, for potentially preventing a larger attack.

The slain officer was later named as Chen Amir, 42.

“I praise the Tel Aviv municipality patrolmen for their vigilance and pursuit, which thwarted a much more serious attack,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Our security forces will settle the score with all those who seek our lives.”

“Your courage will not be forgotten. You are true heroes,” tweeted Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.

Speaking with a Channel 12 reporter at the scene, Huldai said “life must go on as usual.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also praised the response by security forces at the scene, as did President Isaac Herzog and opposition party leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz.

“Security forces will continue to operate everywhere with a strong hand against terror,” Lapid tweeted. “Our enemies should know that we will pursue them and their inciters everywhere.”

“Our hearts are with the family, wife, and little daughters of Chen Amir who was murdered tonight in a terror attack in Tel Aviv,” Lapid tweeted later after Amir’s death was announced. “There are no words that can comfort over the loss, Chen was a hero who lost his life protecting the city’s residents.”

A terrorists opened fire in the heart of Tel Aviv — a number of minutes from my house, and self declared pro-Palestinian activists are already claiming “settlers” were injured.

These “activists” dont want a Palestinian state, they want more dead Jews and a denial of the Jewish… pic.twitter.com/TLbwz7NJXV
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? ????? ????? (@emilykschrader) August 5, 2023

Yet again, the EU is just incapable of calling out the terrorist perpetrator as being Palestinian, yet they never hesitate for moment to condemn Israel. @DTzantchev @EUinIsrael https://t.co/FphzjCNaLd
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) August 5, 2023

Face of pure evil! The Palestinian terror from the #TelAviv shooting was a member of Islamic Jihad, who came from Jenin.

[Per Ynet] pic.twitter.com/brY891Ckx3
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) August 5, 2023

Needless to say he got all the facts of this terrorist attack wrong. He managed to injure 2 municipal security officers. He goes on to say that all the settlers are fleeing the main streets of Tel Aviv. This is also not true. The regular anti-government protest is happening as… pic.twitter.com/Lt0g1rJ6qW
— Imshin (@imshin) August 5, 2023

08/04 Links Pt2: Divided Israelis can't forget: Nowhere else is safe for the Jews; What I learned at the Pittsburgh courthouse; Rolling Stone Jumps on Pro-Terrorist Bandwagon

From Ian:

Divided Israelis can't forget: Nowhere else is safe for the Jews

Those born in Israel may not remember that the Jewish state is the only place where we can go

Is our individual place of birth a factor in our view of Israel? Can we expect someone privileged to be born here to fully comprehend the challenges of being a minority in another country? How different was my childhood in Britain from that of Israeli children today: There were few Jewish schools in existence in my youth, and certainly none in the area where I lived. I went to the local state primary school, where my schooldays were spent as “the odd one out,” viewed as a strange pupil who did not show up for school on Jewish holidays and left early on Fridays.

Could this have been the reason (although not the excuse) for classmates to tell me to “Go back to where you came from”? Born in Britain, I was never sure where I “came from” because, at the time, there was no State of Israel – it was still a dream. Here, whether you are an observant Jew or not, you know that when it is Shabbat or a Jewish holiday, the schools are conveniently closed for all.

Today in the United Kingdom, a high proportion of Jewish children attend Jewish day schools, but increasing rates of antisemitism present other challenges. Too many Jewish pupils, traveling to school on public transport, have experienced antisemitic abuse.

The level of antisemitism in the UK has risen to the point that the government now allocates £15 million a year to the Community Security Trust (CST) – the major Jewish organization created to ensure the safety of Jews in the UK. Specially trained security guards stand outside Jewish schools, synagogues, and all places where Jews congregate in large numbers.

Conversely, what is special here for our Israeli kids – that they understandably take for granted – is the safety of walking to school on their own, even at a comparatively young age. And yes, our schools and synagogues do not require security guards to ensure the safety of those within.

Conservative values can unite a divided Israel

This sense of alienation is at the heart of their request today for judicial reform that will give more power to elected officials that they feel represent them more than the elites.

It seems that most points of contention arise from areas where the government intervenes. Therefore, a shift towards more free-market and conservative philosophies could alleviate many of the internal conflicts in Israel. Even on contentious economic matters, such as the redistribution of wealth from the workforce to the ultra-Orthodox Jews who choose not to work, free-market principles can offer solutions.

In the face of the current crisis, some fringe groups have suggested separating into two different countries – one religious (Judea) and one secular (Israel), echoing the biblical schism in Israel from three thousand years ago. This is not the solution I propose. I believe in one strong Israel, which unites us through our common past and heritage. Instead, I advocate for more autonomy for local authorities and the application of free-market principles in this one united state.

As a free-market party, the Likud should lead the way in this endeavor. By embracing conservative principles, we can address the concerns of all sectors of Israeli society, from secular to religious and from liberal to conservative. We can ensure that Israel remains a Jewish and democratic state, where every individual has the freedom to define their lifestyle and every community can shape its own character.

The ongoing protests are not just about judicial reform. They are a call for a broader conversation about the future of our nation. Let us seize this opportunity to foster unity through diversity, guided by the principles of individual freedom, local autonomy, and minimal government intervention.

This is the path forward for Israel, a path that respects the diverse identities of its citizens while upholding the principles of a Jewish and democratic state.

Israel passed the ‘banana republic’ test - opinion

At long last, Israel showed that it is a country with a military, not a military with a country. Time will tell whether amending the “Basic Law: The Judiciary” by reducing its reasonableness clause will help create a better balance between Israel’s three branches of government. But something much more important has already been achieved.

Despite facing mass protests and unprecedented pressure generated by former IDF generals and reservists – who warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if he didn’t halt the bill, they would cease doing their military duty – the Knesset passed the legislation. By doing so it didn’t bow to blackmail.

That is great news for Israel’s democracy.

The IDF is a “people’s army” with a compulsory draft for most eligible 18-year-olds, both male and female. With every citizen either having served in its ranks, or having friends and family who did, it is arguably the most trusted institution in the country.

In a cynical effort to impact a key policy of the elected parliament, a number of former security chiefs – backed by big bucks, fawning media, and a sophisticated public relations campaign – breached that trust. Thankfully, their endeavor failed.

Good generals know how to wage war. But by the very nature of their positions, which entail spending the bulk of their adult lives in or under the command of others, they often know little about the workings of democracy. At any rate, governments beholden to a class of military elites are traditionally known as “banana republics.’’

And the fact that Israel’s duly elected government did not cave to coercion on the part of former generals and security chiefs is much more important to democracy than curbing the ability of judges to overrule laws on the grounds of the subjective standard of “reasonableness.”

To set the record straight: In Israel, all executive decisions are subject to judicial scrutiny. The Supreme Court has the authority to invalidate any decision found to be unlawful, based on specific stipulations in the law. Over the course of the past three decades, however, the Israeli judiciary went a step further with its “reasonableness” doctrine, which is broader in scope than in any Western democracy.

08/04 Links Pt1: Figures leave no room for doubt: Terrorism has been surging; Democrat Anti-Israel Bill Relies on Research From Designated Terror Group

From Ian:

Figures leave no room for doubt: Terrorism has been surging

The spike in security-related incidents this week, as well as a surge in small-scale incidents that do make headlines because they don't result in casualties, is more than just a coincidence, officials told Israel Hayom.

"We are now at the height of this terrorist wave," a military official told Israel Hayom, pointing out the facts on the ground that support this. More than 15 brigade-level operations have been carried out by the IDF Central Command recently, two of which were carried out over the past two weeks following the IDF operation in Jenin. The official noted that in some of the raids, troops have been dealing with improvised explosive devices hidden beneath the surface, just like in Jenin. The official added that more than 100 terrorists have been detained in the latest Central Command raids.

According to the official, the figures leave no room for doubt that the terrorists have reared their heads. Over the past week, at least three cells were eliminated before they could perpetrate attacks, and since the start of 2023 more than 750 weapons have been seized, although this probably represents only a fraction of what has been trafficked.

As a result of this terrorist surge, settlers have recently lashed out at GOC Central Command Yehuda Fuchs for not cracking down on Palestinian violence and not using his powers to the full extent when it comes to roadblocks and weapon confiscation. However, such attacks have been criticized across the board, since the overall response to the new situation would have to come from the prime minister and defense minister.

UN agency reports nearly 600 settler attacks over past six months

The United Nations warned Friday of a dramatic rise in West Bank settler attacks on Palestinian people and property, with nearly 600 such incidents registered so far this year.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said it had recorded 591 settler-related incidents in the territory in the first six months of 2023 resulting in Palestinian casualties, property damage, or both.

“That’s an average of 99 incidents every month, and a 39-percent-increase compared with the monthly average of the whole of 2022, which is 71,” spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.

And that comes after “the number of such incidents in 2022 was already the highest since we started recording them in 2006,” he said.

Israel has controlled the West Bank since capturing it from Jordan in the Six Day War of 1967. The territory is home to nearly three million Palestinians and around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.

Since early last year, there have been a series of Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli targets, with Israel in turn carrying out raids in the West Bank that have frequently been accompanied by clashes with Palestinian gunmen. Amid this unrest, there has also been violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities.

JPost Editorial: Israel needs a measured response to the Ma'aleh Adumim terror attack

The usually languid atmosphere of Ma’aleh Adumim was shattered on Tuesday when a Palestinian employee of the local community center opened fire in the city center, wounding six people before being killed by an off-duty Border Police officer.

The terrorist, Muhannad Muhammad Suleiman al-Mazara’a, was from Eizariya, a Palestinian town neighboring Ma’aleh Adumim, and was one of some 7,000 Palestinians employed in Ma’aleh Adumim and its nearby industrial area, Mishor Adumim.

Mazara’a had just begun working at the community center, where his father has been working for some 20 years. On the day of the attack, Mazara’a said he was sick, got a ride to the entrance to Eizariya, and then returned to Ma’aleh Adumim an hour later with a gun.

Security forces are investigating how Mazara’a was able to get past the usually stringent security checks at the entrance to Ma’aleh Adumim. All work permits for Palestinians to enter the city were suspended for the day after the attack, Mayor Benny Kashriel announced.

In addition to those measured and sound responses, however, there also have been calls for more extreme measures and changes in policy regarding Palestinian workers in Israel.

Israeli lawmakers call to change policy for Palestinian workers
Likud MK Avichay Buaron accused the commander of IDF Central Command, Maj.-Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, of placing Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the West Bank above the well-being of Israelis.

“Allowing movement rights for Palestinians is more important than hermetically protecting Israelis,” Buaron charged soon after the Ma’aleh Adumim attack, adding that Fuchs’s policies were undermining the country’s top priority of fighting terrorism.

The comments were immediately condemned by both IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who tweeted: “Maj.-Gen. Yehuda Fuchs is a professional officer [who] dedicates his life to the defense of the people of Israel.”

Halevi said: “Any attack on IDF officers by public figures undermines Israel’s security. Under his command, the commanders and soldiers work day and night to ensure the safety of all residents of the West Bank. Any statement that impugns his considerations and his commitment to the security of Israel’s citizens has no merit and deserves all condemnation.”

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from his backbencher Likud colleague, saying: “The denigration of Maj.-Gen. [Yehuda] Fuchs is unacceptable and unworthy.”

Buaron’s attack on the IDF is consistent with the view of some on the Right who have criticized Israel’s provision of work permits to Palestinians, and they crop up whenever a terrorist attack is perpetrated by a Palestinian with such a permit.

Al Mayadeen, a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper, implicitly discusses the previous article about Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi who wanted to perform at an Arab venue in Haifa.

She said that she deliberately entered through the Jordanian border with a Palestinian visa stamp, and therefore was not normalizing with Israel in any way. She also said, "visiting a prisoner cannot be normalization with the jailer," saying that her planned concert "does not mean normalization, rather it is a form of resistance."

The article ridicules that position, saying that "the alleged 'permit' to enter Palestine is nothing but an Israeli visa, through a Palestinian agent." It calls it "normalization by proxy" and says that the only legitimate support for Palestinians is by arming them.

Throughout the essay, the one part that is not addressed is what Palestinians want.

The article is against Muslims visiting Al Aqsa or Christians visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because that is "normalization." But Jerusalem Arabs have consistently asked for Arab tourists to visit - because for many, this is their livelihood. And the same goes for Arabs who want to visit Bethlehem or Ramallah from Jordan.

Similarly, Palestinians would love to see Arab artists perform in the areas under their control, because that makes them feel less isolated from the Arab world.

Al Mayadeen, as well as many Arabs throughout the region, claim to be pro-Palestinian - but the opinions of Palestinians themselves are ignored.

This paradox can be explained very easily.

Trying to understand the conflict through the lens of people being "pro-Palestinian" brings up many similar paradoxes and contradictions. But when you adjust your glasses to translate "pro-Palestinian" into its real definition, "anti-Israel," then it all makes sense. Because to those who are anti-Israel, Palestinian opinion don't matter. Palestinians themselves don't matter unless they can be used as pawns for your own flavor of anti-Israelism.

Practically none of the opinion pieces and academic analyses in both the West and the Arab world about the conflict, with insane attempts to blame Israel for everything wrong in the region, would be much simplified when Arab actions are viewed in terms of their hatred of Israel rather than their pretense of caring about Palestinians.

It explains 1948 as well as it explains 2023.

And now just as then, Israel haters justify how they discard what Palestinian Arabs really want by claiming to know what's good for them better than they themselves do.

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!

Haaretz reports:

Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi...canceled last Monday’s scheduled performance at Fattoush Bar in Haifa, in wake of a BDS media campaign against her. “We call upon Tunisians and Arabs, and all Palestine supporters around the world, to boycott Emel Mathlouthi, all her music and all her shows,” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists had written.

Last Thursday, Mathlouthi posted on her Facebook page a statement rejecting the claims by BDS alleging that she was “normalizing the occupation by cultural means.” She noted that the Palestinian issue is a top priority for her, as evidenced in her songs, positions and personal statements. Nonetheless, her scheduled performance in Haifa sparked controversy on social media, and the pressure from BDS had its intended effect.

“In wake of the controversy raised by the concert tour in the Palestinian territories, and in order to avoid misunderstandings, we’ve decided not to go ahead with the performance in the occupied city of Haifa, even though the place (Fattoush Bar) is under Palestinian ownership,” she wrote.

The attack on the singer elicited fierce discussion on social media by young Palestinians who objected to BDS’ position. Activist Athir Ismail wrote on Facebook: “I am a Palestinian. And I want to speak about what I want without someone from outside watching me and telling me how to fight and how to live.”

Ismail directed her criticism at BDS activists living abroad whose calls for boycotts end up affecting Palestinians who live in Israel. “What do you know about our life here aside from what you see and hear on the news?” she asked. “You cast doubt on our Palestinian identity and act like a man who thinks he has to explain to a woman what she can and can’t do in her fight against toxic masculinity, what’s permitted and what’s forbidden.”

Artist Haya Zaatry from Nazareth also criticized BDS’ actions: “Preventing or canceling a musical performance by an Arab artist in an independent Palestinian space in Haifa only heightens the cultural embargo in which we (Palestinian citizens of Israel) live, and this is a bad and dangerous thing.”

The BDS movement is dominated by privileged white people who falsely claim to be doing what Palestinians want them to do, and when self-described Palestinians tell them they are wrong, they ignore them.

Mathlouthi did end up performing in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah - and those concerts, for some reason, were considered "normalization" with Israel:

A Tunisian singer who rose to prominence during the Arab spring uprisings announced Wednesday an upcoming show in Tunisia had been cancelled for supposed “normalisation” with Israel.

Mathlouthi, 41, had been set to perform at the Hammamet International Festival in Tunisia next week.

“I am very sorry to announce our much awaited concert in Hammamet has been cancelled with no official reason,” Mathlouthi said in a statement posted on Instagram.

“We believe that our latest tour in beautiful Palestine has sparked an unjustified controversy accusing me of normalisation.”

The best possible anti-Israel spokesperson - attractive, talented, and immensely popular - is being canceled for being insufficiently anti-Israel.

When a movement is built on hate, it eventually falls apart because the members start hating each other for not hating enough.

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08/03 Links Pt2: The Obama Factor; The Future of Russian Jewry; Dem Senator Lobbies Egypt to Free Cleric Who Called for Murder of Israeli Tourists

From Ian:

The Obama Factor

David Samuels Interviews MLK Biographer David Garrow on Barack Obama

There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.

Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.

At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.

In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.

No doubt, Obama’s evolving race-based self-consciousness did distance him from Jager; in the end, the couple broke up. Yet it is revealing to read Obama’s account of the breakup in Dreams against the very different account that Jager offers. In Obama’s account, he was the particularist, embracing a personal meaning for the Black experience that Jager, the universalist, refused to grant. In Jager’s account, the poles of the argument are nearly, but not quite, reversed: It is Obama who appears to minimize Jewish anxiety about blood libels coming from the Black community. His particularism mattered; hers didn’t. While Obama defined himself as a realist or pragmatist, the episode reads like a textbook evasion of moral responsibility.

The Future of Russian Jewry

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt sat at the desk of his Jerusalem office on a scorcher of a July day. Wearing a suit and tie, his monogrammed shirt cuff peeking out, Goldschmidt seemed immune to the intense heat—a quality hinting at how, of the 33 years he served as Moscow’s chief rabbi, he might have weathered the last 22 during the presidency of Vladimir Putin.

But everyone has a boiling point, and Goldschmidt reached his when Russian authorities pressured him and other religious leaders to support Putin’s war on Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, 2022.

Goldschmidt publicly opposed the war, departed the country, resigned his pulpit in Moscow’s Choral Synagogue, and resettled in Israel, leaving behind Russia and his and his wife Dara’s work: regenerating the capital’s Jewish community following seven decades of Soviet repression and building an orphanage, a school, and a kollel—an academy for Talmud study.

Last summer, he urged Russia’s Jews to leave the country. This June, the country’s Justice Ministry labeled him and several other visible opponents of the war “foreign agents,” affixing metaphorical targets to their backs.

Nearly a year-and-a-half into Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Goldschmidt sees his condemning of the war and emigrating as correct. He’d been silenced “for all the years under Putin,” he said. “I wasn’t able to say a word.”

Goldschmidt said he recognized the risk of opposing Putin. He cited Ecclesiastes 3:7: “A time to keep silent and a time to speak.” The time, he said, was right to speak.

“The moment I knew that I’d be criticizing the war, that I’d be against the Russian government, I knew that I would have to leave my post as chief rabbi of the city, because the government would use its clutches to get me out or to close down the community,” said Goldschmidt. “It was a decision I knew would have to result in my resignation in order not to endanger the community.”

But leaving and urging others to follow didn’t come easily. Goldschmidt said he spoke with friends, colleagues, and community leaders in Russia and abroad. He researched rabbis’ contemporaneous responses to anti-Jewish agitation, pogroms, and the Holocaust. He sought clarity for what gnawed at him: Was the situation as dire as he thought?

“I was questioning myself in the beginning if I did the right thing or not by leaving. But as the situation evolved, there was no other way,” he said. “I just feel that there’s a moment when a communal leader has to tell his people that the future is not as bright as it was and we should think of other options.”

As to what set his decision-making in motion, Goldschmidt recalled the events of 2022 this way: “I went to sleep in Moscow on Feb. 23 and woke up in the morning in Tehran—a different country with a different political system. I realized that under this new political reality, it would be impossible to speak for a Jewish future. It became almost impossible for a Jewish community to function.”

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Iranians Circumspect About Lack Of Media Coverage Of Continuous Protest: 'We're Not Palestinian' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tehran, August 3 - Nearly a year of demonstrations by ordinary citizens against the repressive policies of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime have faded in the international news consciousness, but have not abated - and the people who continue to defy the totalitarian national leadership nevertheless understand why journalists have lost interest in the popular unrest: the opponents of the demonstrators are not Jews, and therefore, unlike Palestinians, cannot anyone to continue caring after all this time.

Dozens of protests occurred across Iran just over the last week, yet garnered next to no coverage in mainstream western journalism outlets. The movement began - or, many would argue, began again - last September following the killing of Mahsa Amini, arrested for refusing to wear the mandatory head-covering for women. The sustained protest movement has proved more robust and irrepressible than several previous rounds of civil unrest in Iran, dating back to 2009. Journalists have elected to reduce their reporting on the protests, which now barely register in the Western consciousness, if at all, as a result. After all, Iranians aren't Palestinians, whose hundred-year campaign to deny Jews sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland, affecting far fewer people than the Iran situation, deserves sustained, permanent attention in Western headlines.

"We know, we're not Palestinians, whose suffering actually matters," acknowledged Siraj Ganejad, 24, as he evaded blows from a Basij militia thug. "But we have to fight our fight even if Joe Biden wants to support the dictator Khamenei and allow him to threaten the world with nuclear weapons. We accepted our third-rate victim status long ago. We will never be invited to address the UN wearing a sidearm, as Arafat was."

"I wouldn't expect organizations such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International to pay us more than token attention," explained Masih Shirazi, as she was tackled by four enforcement personnel and bundled into a van, bleeding and battered, for the crime of waling around in public without the compulsory hijab. "Sure, we'll make it as a footnote, or part of a statistic in some aggregate report, but not with the bombast or brouhaha that those NGOs can always muster for Israel. Their funding sources and activists aren't interested in the depredations of Iran's leaders, because Iran's leaders aren't Jews. We know we'll always be a footnote to the real struggle, which is of course Justice for Palestine."

A spokesman for The New York Times responded to an inquiry on the subject with surprise that the protests are still happening in Iran.

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08/03 Links Pt1: IRGC chiefs tell UK students to join ‘apocalyptic war’ on Jews; Why Doesn't Anyone Ask Why There Is a Refugee Camp in Jenin?

From Ian:

PMW: Look what the PA is hiding from the US and Britain

The Palestinian Authority often translates Mahmoud Abbas’ important speeches into English and publishes them on the website of its official news agency WAFA. Abbas' speech this week in Cairo was also translated but one striking theme was left out: All the anti-American and anti-British hate speech.

The parts of Abbas' speech at the meeting of the secretaries-general of various Palestinian factions, that were not publicized in English, demonized the US and Britain as “colonialist” states that illegally created Israel. He condemned the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to establish a state in their homeland, as a “conspiracy” to “promise to one [the Jews] who has no right”:
Abbas: “Western colonialism – and the US and Britian in particular – conspired to issue the ominous Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) in 1917, in which one who has no ownership gave a promise to one who has no right.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 31, 2023]

Abbas further criticized that “the colonialist states” - especially the US - persist in their misconduct by continuing to sponsor Israel who Abbas compared to apartheid South Africa:
“We are also especially focusing on creating changes in public opinion in the colonialist states that have sponsored Israel and are still sponsoring it to this very day, and especially in the US (in this context, we have South Africa as a model) [parentheses in source].”

Abbas’ climax on this issue is that because of all these crimes, the PA is planning legal action against the United States and Britain:
“We also will submit lawsuits against the US and Britain for their responsibility for the Balfour Promise and its implementation through the British Mandate for Palestine.”

Finally, since Palestinians - according to Abbas - have existed “on its historical homeland… on this land for thousands of years,” and Israel's history is “false Zionist and Israeli claims and narratives,” Israel is therefore an illegal occupation that is destined to “pass”:
“We will certainly triumph, we will defeat the occupation (i.e., Israel)… for every occupation passes in the end, and this will be the fate of the hated Israeli occupation of our homeland."

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 31, 2023]

Top Palestinian official slams Biden administation as ‘weak’

The Palestinian Authority’s top diplomat on Thursday slammed the Biden administration as “weak” over its failure to date to launch a negotiating process with Israel.

“I’m frustrated,” P.A. Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki told a gathering of reporters in Ramallah, adding, “It seemed that [President Joe Biden] wanted to change all policies [former President Donald] Trump had taken, but not when it comes to Palestine.”

Al-Maliki pointed to what he said was Washington’s failure to rein in Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria and curtail IDF counterterror operations there.

“We have a weak [American] administration when it comes to Palestine,” said al-Maliki. “We re-engaged with the administration hoping that they would have the strength and the courage to move forward.”

Earlier this year, P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas outlined a series of demands for Israeli concessions during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah.

In May, Abbas likened Israel to Nazi Germany during a speech at the United Nations marking “Nakba Day,” meaning the “disaster” or “catastrophe” of the establishment of modern-day Israel on May 14, 1948.

“Zionists continue to say that Israel made the desert bloom. As if Palestine was a desert and they made the desert bloom,” said Abbas. “These are lies. They continue to lie, like Goebbels, and they continue to lie until people believe them.”

IRGC chiefs tell UK students to join ‘apocalyptic war’ on Jews

Senior commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are using a London-based student organisation to pipe extremist antisemitic propaganda and calls for violence into British universities.

The speakers, some of whom who are sanctioned by Britain for human rights abuses, have played key roles in crushing of dissent in Iran.

This is the first time that IRGC commanders have been seen to play a direct role in disseminating regime propaganda in the UK.

The JC has identified eight IRGC leaders who have addressed UK student audiences since early 2020.

Recordings obtained by this newspaper reveal that one commander, Saeed Ghasemi, told British students that the Holocaust was “fake”, boasted of training al-Qaeda terrorists, and urged his audience to join “the beautiful list of soldiers” who would fight and kill Jews in a coming apocalyptic war.

Another, Hossein Yekta, claimed Jews “created homosexuality” and urged his audience to “raise the flag of the Islamic revolution, Islam and martyrdom”. Students should see themselves as “holy warriors”, he said, promising that the “era of the Jews” would soon be at an end.

The disclosures sparked renewed demands from leading MPs and security experts for the government to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist group, making organising similar talks a criminal offence. The move has been resisted by the Foreign Office.

UJS is disgusted that senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps have been speaking on several campuses across the UK. pic.twitter.com/GyY0xZyWWZ
— Union of Jewish Students (@UJS_UK) August 3, 2023

Yemen wins the Jew-hating sweepstakes

The most antisemitic media in the world comes from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Here is an excerpt from a (now) Houthi newspaper, Al Thawra about Jewish influence in the world.

The autotranslation of the top is pretty representative.

The licentious life of the Italian clergy was prostitution, filth, and indulgence, natural or unnatural. Macchio described the monks and the Brotherhood as "servants of the devil." They indulge in debauchery, homosexuality, gluttony, selling religious functions, and deviating from religion, and they say that the men of the army are of better morals than the clerics.
As the monasteries of men and women were close enough to allow those in it to share from time to time in one bed. The monasteries' records contain twenty volumes of trials due to sexual intercourse between monks and nuns... and others.
It is clear from this section of the Christian legacy that the Jews controlled the clergy with lust and moral corruption and made them, under these scandals, their slaves.. Hence the collapse began.
They were able to control the popes, and thus society lost its confidence in them, and the process of moral and ethical collapse began.

The Jewish movement sought to create an alternative lifestyle for the wealthy in order to challenge social norms. Its main focus was the pursuit of pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. This pursuit often involved non-traditional relationships between men and women as well as same-sex relationships or same-sex relationships between women. It started with the Industrial Revolution and has grown ever since. The Decadent Movement is characterized by an emphasis on luxury and excess, with an emphasis on extravagance, decadence, and hedonism, and women were given greater rights over their own bodies.
With the emergence of this degenerate movement made by the Jews, the beginning of Western civilization (barbaric civilization) can be calculated.

This mimics Nazi antisemitic literature.

Yet there are close to no academic studies that look at Houthi antisemitism.

If Jew-hatred doesn't come from the Right, no one is interested - even when the hatred is clearly influenced by Nazi sources.

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

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Read all about it here!

Another false accusation of an Israeli law discriminating against Arabs

Jewish Voice for Peace writes in their email newsletter:

On Sunday, the Israeli Knesset passed a shockingly racist law — even by the standards of Israel’s apartheid government.

Under the new "sexual terrorism" law, Palestinian citizens of Israel convicted of rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment can receive double the sentence of Israelis found guilty of the same crimes. The law passed in a bipartisan vote of 39-7, and received immediate condemnation from journalists, Israeli feminist groups, and Palestinian lawmakers.

This law manufactures an image of Palestinians as more violent and more dangerous than Israelis. According to the law, a crime is inherently worse simply because a Palestinian committed it. This puts a target on the back of Palestinian men and boys, intensifying the constant threat of violence that Palestinians already live under.

Really? A law that says that Israeli Arabs would get double the sentence of Israeli Jews?

Of course not. The law is described in Times of Israel:

The Knesset on Monday passed a right-wing-backed law that makes terrorist, nationalist or racist motivations an aggravating factor in crimes of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Aggravating factors come into play during criminal sentencing and are a consideration that can push judges toward issuing a sentence closer to the legal maximum.

The law would double compensation fines for sexual harassment motivated by racism or hostility toward certain groups.

The entire intent of the law is to ensure that in cases like the rape and murder of Ori Ansbacher, where the smiling terrorist admitted that his attack was for nationalist reasons, that the sentence would be stricter.

There hasn't been a huge amount of Palestinian rape of Jewish women specifically as terrorism, but they have occured. In 2012, a Palestinian kidnapped a Jewish couple and raped the woman. The court at the time did not consider this a terror attack, but the Israeli Defense Ministry did determine it was a "nationalistic" crime because of previous terror attacks by the rapist.

An Israeli woman gang-raped by four Palestinians in 2006 was likewise determined by the Defense Ministry to have been the victim of a nationalist crime.

In these crimes, the rapist specifically seeks out a Jewish woman for attack. As heinous as any rape is, when it is done as a terror act, it is worse: the rapist does not attack Arab women but specifically Jews.

There have also been reports of Palestinian youths sexually assaulting Jewish women on buses and other public places. Again, when they single out Jewish women for assault, that is a terror attack, not an ordinary rape.

There is nothing wrong, and certainly not racist, with saying that a terror rape attack should have a stricter punishment than a similar attack that had no nationalistic motive.

The law does not say anything about Arabs. If a British-born BDS activist would rape an Israeli Jewish woman he would get the same consideration for a sentence.

As we've seen, Israeli courts have not automatically determined that every rape by a Palestinian is a terror attack, just as they do not automatically determine that every shooting by Arabs against Jews is a terror attack - some crimes have only criminal motivation.

The only bigots here are the members of JVP. Notice their wording, defining Israeli Arabs as "Palestinians" and saying that "Israelis" are all Jews. Even though very few Israeli Arabs define themselves as "Palestinian," JVP is telling them that they are not really Israeli, dismissing their own self-definition. And then JVP calls Jews racists for passing a law against terrorism and racism.

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

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08/02 Links Pt2: Jury votes to sentence Tree of Life synagogue killer to death; Don't let the Palestinians erase the Jewish history of Israel

From Ian:

Pittsburgh jury votes to sentence Tree of Life synagogue killer to death

A federal jury on Wednesday sentenced Robert Bowers to death for killing 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history, the New York Times reported.

In June, the jury found Bowers, 50, guilty of dozens of federal hate crimes in the trial held at the US District Court in Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. Bowers was convicted of 63 counts, including 11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death.

Two weeks ago, during the first phase of the sentencing portion of the trial, the jury found Bowers to be eligible for the death penalty. Jurors then heard testimony and arguments from both prosecutors and defense attorneys as to whether he deserved to be put to death for the killings.

On June 16, the jury found him guilty on all counts, with defense lawyers offering no dispute that he planned and carried out the attack.

First-hand accounts pulled at the heartstrings of jurors
Jurors heard testimony from some of the survivors of the attack and evidence of Bowers' antisemitism, including multiple posts attacking Jews made on a far-right website in the months leading up to the attack.

In federal capital cases, a unanimous vote by jurors in a separate penalty phase of the trial is required in order to sentence a defendant to death, and the judge cannot reject the jury's vote. If jurors are unable to reach a unanimous decision, the offender is instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.

In the sentencing phase, prosecutors have argued that Bowers had the necessary intent and premeditation to qualify for the death penalty. They presented witnesses and evidence to show he carefully planned the attack and deliberately targeted vulnerable elderly worshipers.

Defense lawyers argued that Bowers suffers from major mental illness, including schizophrenia, and so lacked the necessary level of intent.

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who hid in a bathroom during the attack, thanked the jury in a statement, saying "it is my hope that we can begin to heal and move forward."

US Jewish leaders applaud death sentence for Tree of Life shooter

Jewish organizations have applauded a Pittsburg jury's Wednesday decision to sentence the perpetrator of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018.

Amb. Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, emphasized, "Today's decision represents a measure of justice for the slaughter of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest act of antisemitism in US history."

Lauder continued, "The jury's decision is a stark reminder to remain vigilant against antisemitism, calling on American leaders to amplify efforts to protect Jewish communities nationwide."

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) stated, "As we process the jury's decision, let us remember the eleven lives lost to a cold-blooded hater of Jews while at prayer in the synagogue."

Yaakov Hagoel, chairman of the World Zionist Organization, praised the Pennsylvania court's decision to sentence the antisemitic killer to death, asserting, "No punishment can undo the loss of these 11 lives, but we will not forget nor forgive."

Reflection on the Jewish community of Pittsburgh
Jewish Federations of North America shared their thoughts and prayers, stating: "As our friends at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh reflect, our thoughts, sympathy, and prayers today are with the Pittsburgh community; the families of the victims; the survivors and first responders directly affected; the congregations that lost loved members; and all of the people traumatized by this crime."

They continued by remembering and honoring the eleven victims.

As they acknowledged the closing of this chapter, the organization emphasized the strength and resilience of Pittsburgh's Jewish community.

Chairman of The Jewish Agency, Doron Almog, reflected on his visit to the Pittsburgh community, stating: "A year ago I visited the Pittsburgh community that is still picking up the pieces from the unimaginable tragedy. The memory of the murdered will be encircled in our hearts, and we at the Jewish Agency send a big hug and strengthen the hands of the families and the community."