Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 09, 2023

Interview With Pierre Rehov: "Hamas Made A Big Mistake" (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Pierre Rehov is a French-Israeli filmmaker known for his movies about the Arab–Israeli conflict, Israel in the media, and Palestinian terrorism. I had the opportunity to speak with him about his thoughts about the latest brutal attack by Hamas.

Pierre Rehov

(This interview was edited for clarity and brevity)

In your interviews of members of Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and Hamas, what did you find motivates these terrorists?

There are many answers to that and 2 levels of answers.

One level is political: they are brainwashed. These terrorists actually believe Islam must prevail and conquer the world. But I was more interested in their personal stories. Most of them were suicide bombers who were unsuccessful in their mission. But there was one who succeeded, but his life was saved in an Israeli hospital. I wanted to know what motivated them to want to kill themselves like that.

Also, I sent a team to Japan to interview former kamikazes and see what they thought about Muslim "kamikazes." The Japanese kamikazes were ashamed because they acted out of honor and would only target military personnel. They were not like the Palestinian terrorists, whose main goal was to terrorize, to target women and children. The terrorists would avoid the army and the police; they just wanted to target as many women and children as possible.

Below:

In a promotional excerpt of Rehov's Path To Darkness on YouTube a former kamikaze relates
(at 1:43):
I was angry that terrorists used our tactic to carry out such dirty acts. Then people started calling them "kamikaze." I could not stand it.

I asked the Hamas prisoners why they did that -- what would it do for them? They described their actions as nationalistic and in terms of duty. I realized that I was talking to people with a high level of frustration, living in an oppressive society where they would have no real chance of going out with girls and getting married. Without this outlet, these kids were prime targets for the local imam or leader who encouraged them to kill themselves, a few Jews -- and end up in heaven.

And if they fail in their mission and end up in prison, they will receive a stipend from the Palestinian Authority and their families will be honored as a family of heroes. It is a whole society built around a hatred of Jews. It is not by accident that they become terrorists.

Have you seen any differences in the motivation among different terrorist groups?

No. Hamas made a big mistake. Most of the massacres on October 7th were committed not by Hamas people but by Gazan civilians they allowed to follow them in. Hamas had orders to commit a certain number of crimes, tortures, and kidnappings, but they were followed by over a thousand civilians from Gaza who were more than happy to torture, set people on fire, kill them, and call their families. Hamas did not expect them to then film themselves because they were so proud of themselves. Those videos are now all over social media.

In the past, Hamas always had the same strategy. They would attack Israel, Israel would retaliate, and then Hamas would hide behind civilians and use them as human shields. When Israel would then bomb Gaza, Hamas would show pictures that the media, especially the left-wing media, would be only too happy to publish. They would call the Israelis "murderers" and everyone would be on Hamas's side.

This time, the Hamas atrocities can be found all around the Internet, and they cannot lie about it anymore. They thought things would turn out the same way as in 2014, that Israel would retaliate, followed by another ceasefire and demands that Israel stop.

This time it is not going to work. Also, they thought with Israel's anti-government protests, left-wing vs right-wing, people protesting in the streets against judicial reform, religious vs non-religious, and everyone fighting against each other -- that Israel was divided and weak. But on October 8th, Israel woke up. It is not going to give up on getting back the hostages and it is not going to give up on getting rid of Hamas. No matter the cost.

Why is it that this time around, with all the brutal murders, there are still sympathizers with the Palestinian terrorists?

Lenin had a phrase for people like this: useful idiots. Those brainwashed kids know nothing about history, like the kids in the 1970s who followed Che Guevera and Castro because it was so cool to be against capitalism. Today, the new hero is the Hamas terrorist who continues to attack Israel after all the Arab armies were unable to defeat it, so Palestine became a big symbol. You also have the communists, whose goal is to destroy capitalism and the West. Remember, the Palestinian cause was invented by Yasir Arafat in 1964 with the help of the KGB. Arafat wanted to pull the Arab countries together against Israel. The Soviet Union allied with the Arab countries because they opposed the US. Another factor in the creation of the Palestinian people is that between WWI and WWII you had the Grand Mufti who tried to inspire the Arabs with a sense of nationalism against a Jewish state.

The history of pre-Israel Palestine, especially the developments between WWI and WWII is complicated. How can you explain that to a kid 20 years old, when you can just give him a Palestinian flag and tell him to go with his friends in the street and sing "Palestine Will Be Free!"

Meanwhile, antisemitism is back big time. I would say we are back to where we were in 1938, having another Chamberlain trying to make peace with Hitler, the same way that Obama tried to make peace with Iran. Iran was aware of what Hamas was going to do. In fact, Hamas was originally supposed to attack on Passover. Iran asked them to hold on and wait because they were in the middle of a deal with Biden who was going to give them six billion dollars. Iran wanted to get the money first, and then Hamas could go ahead and attack Israel. Not all of the details are clear.

Iran and Hamas did not anticipate that Biden would send the USS Gerald Ford and USS Eisenhower to the Middle East to protect Israel. If the Gazan civilians had not been filming all those atrocities, maybe Biden would not have felt forced to act so strongly on the side of Israel. Any human being, whether you are on the left or the right, Democrat or Republican, would have to be a soulless person to not be shocked or disgusted by what happened.

Besides being known for their terrorism, Hamas is also known for its propaganda. Do you think that Hamas has been as successful in its propaganda as it has been in the past?

No. A lot of people woke up, especially the Jewish community in general and the Jewish community in America in particular. Even someone like Bernie Sanders said there should not be a ceasefire. How shocked must he have been to realize at a certain point that this was not the Palestine he was dreaming of, to realize that here was a Nazi type of organization, with the goal to conquer the Western world -- but with Israel in the way, they cannot go ahead with the rest of the plan.

As far as the pogroms of the Jews are concerned, in the Muslim world you had Morocco in 1907 when sixty-five Jews were murdered in the same way. There was Hebron in 1929, when the Grand Mufti Hussein claimed Jews wanted to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. There was the Farhud in Iraq in 1941. But it was not just Jews. Look at Yasir Arafat, the PLO and Fatah. When they were in Lebanon, they completely destroyed the Christian city of Damour in 1976, a few weeks before Sabra and Shatila.

You have said that to interview Hamas terrorists in Israeli prisons, you need the permission of Hamas as well as of Israel. Why would Hamas give permission to speak to Hamas terrorists in prison?

First, there is the propaganda value of the interview. Also, for the terrorists, having a reporter with a movie team, a translator, a soundtaker, and a cameraman -- it's kind of fun in the middle of the boredom.

Remember, they think differently than a Westerner. They took pictures of themselves committing massacres. Even the Nazis did not do that; they tried to hide everything they did. These terrorists did not try to hide; they posted what they did on social networks. They are proud of what they did and believe they are right. They want to convince me. My only goal was to expose them and try to understand them on a personal level.

Do you think this time Hamas will again get a ceasefire?

This time will be totally different. If the government of Israel stops or allows a ceasefire without getting rid of Hamas and getting back the hostages, the people of Israel will hang Bibi. Nobody in Israel wants a ceasefire. Everyone in Israel wants to go all the way. The leader of Israel has to do what the people want. It is a trauma beyond anything that anyone in the world can fathom at this point. It is a repetition of the Shoah. It is in our DNA. We will not forget what happened in the Holocaust. We will not forget the pogroms in Russia and Poland. We will not forget the Inquisition, the Crusades and the Warsaw Ghetto. This time it is one time too much. There is a big difference.

This time our enemies are dealing with a country with a very powerful army.

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!

11/09 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The truth is Israel’s narrative; Stop the UN from enabling Hamas war crimes; How Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas

From Ian:

The Dogs of War

This is what spoiled Westerners, comfortable in their liberal redoubts, don’t understand. At the violent fringes of the liberal order, showy social justice crusades and appeals to universalist notions of democracy aren’t a priority: Survival and the maintenance of civilization are. A society in which statements like “words are violence” are taken seriously is no longer capable of comprehending a blood-soaked child’s bed, much less the mentality of the man who shouldered a rifle, pointed it at the face of a terrorized child, and smiled as he pulled the trigger.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, recently announced it was organizing a team to assassinate every Hamas terrorist involved with the Black Saturday attacks. Given Hamas’ penchant for livestreaming their atrocities, they’ll have lots of information to go on. “As your sword has bereaved women, So shall your mother be bereaved among women,” said Samuel to the king of the Amalekites before slaying him. And there will be many bereaved mothers of Hamas terrorists soon.

This is a repeat of the legendary Operation Wrath of God, when the Mossad systematically assassinated nearly all the terrorists involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics attack, a process which took years. The Hollywood version of the Wrath of God story, the very watchable Munich from Steven Spielberg, ends with an interesting Socratic dialogue between the leader of the assassination team, Avner (played by a moody Eric Bana), and his Mossad handler (played by a phlegmatic Geoffrey Rush). With a computer-generated 1970s-era World Trade Center as symbolic backdrop (the movie is from 2005), the two men debate whether the violent saga of their operation was worth it.

The disillusioned Avner: “Did we accomplish anything at all? Every man we killed will be replaced by worse.”

To which the Mossad man drily replies: “Why cut my finger nails? They’ll grow back.”

That world-weary acceptance of the endless nail-cutting required to keep the Zionist project going was the tone I heard from most Israelis when I asked how this would all end. Nobody had any idea, but right now the only goal was the elimination of Hamas. “The Lord will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation,” says Exodus, and every Israeli generation has had to make war against some existential threat or another.

A Gaza whose biggest export is violence now faces off against an Israel which made the desert bloom into an economy as prosperous as Germany’s. A military that uses civilians to shield its soldiers will now fight against one that deploys its military to protect its civilians. All the men ululating “Allahu akbar!” in those videos, who thought themselves so brave and heroic for their butchery of unarmed Jewish women and children (Father be proud of me!) will now confront in violent combat the well-armed fathers, husbands, and sons of those same victims.

In a rousing speech to the Israeli army amassed on Gaza’s northern fringe, General Yaron Finkelman addressed the troops about to battle Hamas:

“My brothers in arms, the residents of Be’eri, Sderot, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, and the West Negev Communities, and alongside them all the people of Israel, are all looking at us now … we have one goal: Victory.”

Let the Americans and Europeans project their neuroses and have their Twitter fights over posters. For them, this conflict is little different than a football match: something two sides witness on the sidelines with signs and slogans, shouting pointless abuse at each other. In Israel, the war is very real, and its goal is best expressed by another Jewish military commander, this time Moses in Deuteronomy:

“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Richard Goldberg: Stop the UN from enabling Hamas war crimes

UNRWA today is a welfare agency that brands its Palestinian population as "refugees" for political purposes. First of all, it keeps the donations flowing in from Western governments. The more pernicious effect of this delusion is it nourishes Palestinian hopes that one day the state of Israel will be destroyed, and millions of people will take over Jewish homes.

In Gaza, UNRWA subsidizes Hamas by delivering basic services instead of the government – enabling Hamas to spend more money on terrorism instead. Meanwhile, UNRWA schools indoctrinate Palestinian children with virulent antisemitism – the kind of hatred that fueled the Oct. 7 massacre.

UNRWA staff, contractors and beneficiaries are, by design, not subject to U.S. counterterrorism vetting – because to conduct such vetting would reveal the extent to which U.N. money flows into Hamas coffers.

That Hamas would establish a base of terror operations inside one of UNRWA's so-called refugee camps is nothing new.

In Gaza, Hamas has used UNRWA schools to launch rockets and build tunnels. In the West Bank, UNRWA's Jenin "refugee camp" has been a hotbed of terrorism. In Lebanon, UNRWA's Ain al Hilweh "refugee camp" is the center of a months-long battle between competing terrorist groups.

Put simply, UNRWA is an institutionalized international welfare system for terrorism. In 2021, UNRWA’s Gaza chief dared to confirm that the Israeli military acted ethically and responsibly. He was removed from his post shortly after due to Hamas protests.

Where does that leave U.S. policy as the Hamas-UNRWA propaganda machine provides cover for military assets and educates children to commit genocide while accusing Israel of war crimes?

President Biden unconditionally resumed funding UNRWA after President Trump cut it in 2018. Congress can defend the integrity of taxpayer dollars and avoid subsidizing Hamas war crimes by halting aid to UNRWA until it complies with three basic requirements.

First, UNRWA employees, contractors and beneficiaries must be subject to terror checks. Members of Hamas – a U.S. designated terror organization – should be precluded from employment by a U.S. funded agency.

Second, UNRWA must complete an immediate overhaul of its educational material to remove antisemitism and incitement against Israel and instead include a U.S.-supervised curriculum that promotes tolerance.

Finally, and most importantly, UNRWA must cease its policy of attributing the word "refugee" to Palestinians born after 1949. While those individuals may still be entitled to receive goods and services from a welfare agency, it must not continue to raise children with a quest to destroy Israel.

If UNRWA fails to make these critical reforms it will continue to fuel the bloody conflict though cultivating new generations of Hamas terrorists and sympathizers, sponsored by U.S. tax dollars.

Int'l law expert: Why is the UN anti-Israel? Antisemitism, it's always been antisemitism

When asked where this anti-Israel bias at the UN comes from, Bayefsky declared that "it's simply antisemitism. It's always been antisemitism."

"Since 1947-48, it's been a single-handed effort to eradicate the Jewish State. And the question is, really for Israelis and for Americans and for others, to what extent are we going to continue to allow the UN to be the leverage, the political hammer to destroy the State of Israel and the Jewish State? I worry, honestly, that the United States is making a very dangerous calculation. The UN General Assembly adopted an incredible resolution, an emergency special session. Everybody is there. And what do they do? They don't condemn Hamas and they don't say Israel has the right of self-defense. And what happened to that resolution? The Germans abstained, the French voted for it with Iran."

"The UN has become a terror enabler," she declared, saying that the US "is trying to figure out, just how much are we going to allow Israel to try to win this war? At what point are we going to say, 'well the UN Security Council made me do it,' as President Obama did at the end of his term in office? I worry that without a very considerable unified, or if not unified, a vast majority of Americans need to stand up and to reject the obscene moral equivalence and the use of the United Nations to somehow carry on with its 75-year war to destroy the State of Israel."

Bayefsky dismissed the attitude expressed by Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who famously declared "Um-Shmum" in dismissal of the UN's constant condemnations of Israel as meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

"It's been a terrible mistake for decades. I still get "Um-Shmum," I still get, 'well, ok, but you know how much of it is really antisemitism. There's a larger war, there's a context.' That's the UN game. 'There's a context.' The context is the effort, not even the effort, the actual killing of Jews in the here and now, the refusal to recognize what antisemitism looks like. And antisemitism is the global effort by people like Navi Pillay and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to put atrocities against Jews, the effort to have a one-state solution - which i genocide against the Jewish people - and to put it into some kind of fake 'context,' to deny the reality of what we see on the ground, to lie about what international law entails.

"For us to somehow diminish the extraordinary ramifications and ability of the UN to pervert our moral compass, is a terrible mistake. And all you have to do is look at the Germans abstaining on a UN resolution which didn't say Israel has a right of self-defense or condemn Hamas and the French voting for Iran, and the United States now playing around at the Security Council to see how far they can push it to try to impose a so-called 'humanitarian pause.'

"Where's the humanity in pausing for one second the effort to release every single hostage," she asked.

Despite the antisemitism at the UN, Prof. Bayefsky said that she is not ready to "give up" on Western nations who have abstained or voted in favor of recent anti-Israel resolutions that failed to condemn Hamas, including the UK, Germany, France, and Canada.

"The center of the ability of Israel to fight back is happening in Washington and New York. The Americans have to make it very crystal clear to this government that the UN has no moral compass, that it doesn't speak for the majority of Americans, that it is an obscenity for it to be paid for largely by Americans, and that we have to hold out against this global progrom, which is what it is. It's on the ground, and it's at the United Nations," Prof. Bayefsky concluded.

Seriously @washingtonpost?

You had it right the first time.

But taking it down is just an act of utter cowardice and acquiescence to these Hamas jihadist terrorists! pic.twitter.com/w6K7ing1t7
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2023

Intelligent.com did a survey of 609 current college students across the US about the Gaza war.

Taken at the end of October, the survey found that 22% of students sympathize with Hamas.

Not Gazans, not Palestinian civilians - Hamas.

More than one in five college students sympathize with an explicitly genocidal terror group that openly slaughtered, raped, burned, kidnapped and injured thousands of Jews.

We have a big problem on American campuses. Supporting Hamas is as morally reprehensible as supporting Nazis. Both have openly genocidal agendas for all Jews. This is a massive failure of our educational system, of parents, and of the media.

Speaking of, a vast majority of these students - 86% - get their news about the conflict from social media, far more than from news articles (68%). While about 75% consider themselves as least somewhat knowledgeable about the conflict, only 6% have ever read a book about it.

This is part of the problem. They are learning about the conflict from TikTok..

The poll also indicated that a huge majority of Jewish college students feel less safe on campus since the October 7 massacre, while nearly all Muslim college students felt just as safe as beforehand. While the sample sizes were small, 14 out of 18 Jewish students surveyed felt less safe on campus, while only one out of 14 Muslim students felt that way.

Perhaps the Jews feel less safe because they know that in any random classroom of 30 students, an average of 6 of their classmates have sympathy for a group that wants to see every Jew worldwide murdered.

-------

The survey was conducted by Pollfish using an interesting methodology that should be very accurate for college students (I don't think it would be accurate for older people.)

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!

Hamas pretends it is destroying tanks - but is really showing Israel's TROPHY repelling their anti-tank missiles

Hamas has published lots of dramatic videos showing them shoot at Israeli tanks and dramatic explosions that result, which they then claim destroyed the tanks and killed the soldiers inside.

Here's a Hamas video gleefully published by Al Jazeera earlier this week claiming to prove they have destroyed six tanks.

Here are two frames from that video that show a dramatic explosion seemingly on the tank:

The blast is not the missile hitting the tank, but the TROPHY system, built by Rafael, which shoots projectiles that exploding the anti-tank missile shortly before it can hit the tank itself, dissipating the explosion so it cannot penetrate the tanks' hull.

Here's how it works:

TROPHY is deployed on Israeli Abrams, Leopard, Challenger, Merkava and Namer.tanks and armored vehicles:

The IDF has confirmed that the TROPHY system has been effective. "We encountered dozens of anti-tank missiles launched at our forces, and in each case, we managed to avoid damage due to the good systems we have," Lt. Col. Itzik Cohen, commander of the 162nd division, told a press briefing.

And how do we know Hamas and Al Jazeera are lying?

They never show the "destroyed" or damaged tanks after the explosion. Because the tanks keep going, without any problems.

And in some cases, they fire back within seconds to the source of the missile.

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!

Arab media publishes lots of their classic antisemitic fairy tales

Today I am seeing the most prevalent daily antisemitism I've ever seen in Arab media.

Examples from the past 24 hours:

Asil TV (Shiite): "The Zionist Temple does not exist in the Jewish holy books"

Masr Times (Egypt:) "Details of Israel's plan to control the Middle East"

Arabic Post: a romanticizing of the deadly 1929 pogroms (the closest analogy to October 7) as the "Buraq Revolution," claiming Jews planned to destroy the Kotel and Temple Mount

Al Shorouk (Algeria): The bogus "Franklin Prophecy" where Benjamin Franklin is claimed to wan to rid America of Jews

Al Masdar Online (Yemen): All Biden's advisers are either Jewish or Zionist.

El Aosboa (Egypt) quotes academic fraud Shlomo Sand that the concept of the "Jewish people" was invented in the late 19th century. (For fun, I did a search for the term; here it is in a book from 1650. Also there were Psalms-based church songs using the term from at least 1677.)

There were at least two more articles about how Israelis are supposedly planting gharqad trees to protect themselves from Muslims, since those trees will not join the othe rtrees and stones directing Muslims to where Jews are hiding so they can be slaughtered.

One Palestinian site has an article calling for a "Palestinian Holocaust Museum" - meaning, a museum about how Jews are Nazis. Enough said.

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!

11/08 Links Pt2: Hamas Defenders Wield Words as Weapons; Make Qatar choose; Hamas uses ambulances to transfer weapons and terrorists; End DEI

From Ian:

Hamas Defenders Wield Words as Weapons

From the streets of American and European cities, television studios, newspaper columns and legislatures, we are being bombarded with rhetoric that seeks to persuade us not to believe what we see, to convince us that right is wrong, justice is tyranny, terrorism is heroism. All kinds of cunning efforts have been used to get us to see that the country whose citizens were wantonly slaughtered on Oct. 7 by an enemy that has sworn to wipe it from the planet is in fact the wicked oppressor.

"Cease-fire" sounds straightforwardly decent. But we know it would mean victory for Hamas. It would mean that the terrorist group should be allowed to continue to run a statelet only a few weeks after it has made good on its commitment to attack its neighbor and done so with complete disregard for international law or common decency.

There is something especially malignant about the term "genocide" to describe Israel's operation in Gaza - and those propagating it know that full well. They use it deliberately to equate what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis with a military action today that is justified in self-defense. If you can suggest that what Israel is doing in Gaza is equivalent to what happened in the gas chambers, then you are explicitly reducing the Holocaust to the level of a regrettable byproduct of a legitimate military campaign.

"Decolonization." The idea that Israel is a colonist settlement on Arab soil is such ahistorical nonsense that we can understand why it could be tolerated only on the campuses of our most prestigious universities.

Clifford D. May: Make Qatar choose

The war launched by Hamas has put the lives of Gazans in jeopardy. Israelis have dropped more than a million pamphlets and made more than 6 million phone calls advising Gazans uninterested in killing or dying to head south, away from Hama' "center of gravity" in the northern section of the coastal enclave.

Hamas prefers they stay and die. We are "proud to sacrifice martyrs," Mr. Hamad told the Lebanese TV interviewer. The use of human shields is a serious crime under international law (a Western concept). The Biden administration, which has steadfastly supported Israel's right to self-defense, has begun pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare temporary ceasefires. Mr. Netanyahu has said there will be no cessation of military operations "that does not include the release of our hostages."

Among the hostages surviving (we hope) in Hamas' tunnels are infants and toddlers. And how exactly would a "humanitarian pause" work? Would Israeli troops in Gaza do crossword puzzles while keeping an eye out for terrorists popping out of holes to shoot them?

To further assist Gazan non-combatants' exodus from the north, Israeli forces last Saturday opened a humanitarian corridor. Hamas attacked the Israelis with mortars and anti-tank missiles and shot Gazans attempting to utilize the corridor. They then, of course, blamed the carnage on the Israelis.

The more Gazan ground Israelis manage to clear, the more safe spaces there will be for noncombatants, and the more aid that can be supplied. Already, about 100 truckloads are arriving daily. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Israelis have been displaced from communities near the Gaza and Lebanon borders – the biggest internal displacement in Israel's history.

Northern Israel has been under sporadic attack from Lebanese Hezbollah, Tehran's foreign legion. For now, at least, Hezbollah appears reluctant to open a full-fledged second front. I have a modest suggestion. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh lives, quite comfortably, in Qatar. American officials should ask Qatar's leaders to choose: Are you with us or against us?

If they are with us, they need to give Mr. Haniyah, an ultimatum: You have one week to get the hostages back from your Hamas friends.

Should that not happen, the US would revoke Qatar's status as a "major non-NATO ally" and designate Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism. For Mr. Haniyeh, too, there must be consequences. Of course, Hamas' surrender would save more lives more quickly. But I'm reminded of an old aphorism: "If you teach a cannibal to eat with a knife and fork, that's progress."

And Western civ could use a little progress right now.

Bari Weiss: End DEI

We have been seeing for several years now the damage this ideology has done: DEI, and its cadres of enforcers, undermine the central missions of the institutions that adopt it. But nothing has made the dangers of DEI more clear than what’s happening these days on our college campuses—the places where our future leaders are nurtured.

It is there that professors are compelled to pledge fidelity to DEI in order to get hired, promoted, or tenured. (For more on this, please read John Sailer’s Free Press piece: "How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities.”) And it is there that the hideousness of this worldview has been on full display over the past few weeks: We see students and professors, immersed not in facts, knowledge, and history, but in a dehumanizing ideology that has led them to celebrate or justify terrorism.

Jews, who understand that being made in the image of God bestows inviolate sanctity on every human life, must not stand by as that principle, so central to the promise of this country and its hard won freedoms, is erased.

For Jews, there are obvious and glaring dangers in a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than opportunity.

What we must do is reverse this.

The answer is not for the Jewish community to plead its cause before the intersectional coalition, or beg for a higher ranking in the new ladder of victimhood. That is a losing strategy—not just for Jewish dignity, but for the values we hold as Jews and as Americans.

The Jewish commitment to justice—and the American Jewish community’s powerful and historic opposition to racism—is a source of tremendous pride. That should never waver. Nor should our commitment to stand by our friends, especially when they need our support as we now need theirs.

But “DEI” is not about the words it uses as camouflage. DEI is about arrogating power.

And the movement that is gathering all this power does not like America or liberalism. It does not believe that America is a good country—at least no better than China or Iran. It calls itself progressive, but it does not believe in progress; it is explicitly anti-growth. It claims to promote “equity,” but its answer to the challenge of teaching math or reading to disadvantaged children is to eliminate math and reading tests. It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.

An ideology that pathologizes these fundamental human virtues is one that seeks to undermine what makes America exceptional.

It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.

The Jewish people have outlived every single regime and ideology that has sought our elimination. We will persist, one way or another. But DEI is undermining America, and that for which it stands—including the principles that have made it a place of unparalleled opportunity, safety, and freedom for so many. Fighting it is the least we owe this country.

Aviva Klompas: Things We Would Like to See Palestine Free From

We want to see Palestinians free from their other Arab "allies" as well. Allies like Egypt who have barely opened their border with Gaza for aid, let alone commerce. Allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan have no interest in taking in Palestinian refugees and close their borders to them. Allies like Turkey and Qatar who empower Hamas' reign of terror in Gaza by harboring their leaders. With allies like these, who needs enemies?

We want to see Palestinians free from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the most dysfunctional relief organization in the world. A slouching, bloated bureaucracy, UNRWA's senior leadership has been mired in scandal for years, including charges of nepotism, corruption, and sexual misconduct. They have a billion-dollar budget and yet Palestinians remain trapped in an endless cycle of destitution. UNRWA does not work, and it does not serve the Palestinian people.

Finally, we'd like to see Palestinians free from Western academic orthodoxy, the adherents of which naively chant, "from the river to the sea," but who have no meaningful understanding of the history, politics or culture of the middle east. Their virtue signaling is an act of violence because it legitimates those who wield authoritarian violence over Gaza. Their patronizing ideology requires Palestinians to remain forever impoverished, forever victims without agency — rather than a people with a future.

We are unapologetically Zionist, believing that the state of Israel embodies the promise of a homeland free from persecution for the Jewish people. We also want to see Palestinians prosper as a people. This requires Palestinian leadership that is willing to compromise and recognize a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Arab intransigence is not a starting point. Neither is Palestinian terrorism.

And that means ensuring that a future state of Palestine is free of Hamas, free from the corruption of Fatah, from the dysfunction of UNRWA, from the cynical exploitation of so-called allies, and from the idiocy of academia.

From there, we can do more than hope and pray for peace: we can realize it. From the river to the sea.

From the River to the Sea? Arab Citizens of Israel Say, No Thanks to ‘Liberation’

Palestinians and their allies have justified and even celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel as a blow against Jewish oppression. But the 2 million Arab citizens of Israel have overwhelmingly responded by drawing closer to the Jewish state.

Among Arab Israelis, prominent media personalities have helped lead an unprecedented surge in support for their country and opposition to their self-proclaimed liberator Hamas. Pro-Israel arguments that were previously almost unspeakable in the Arab mainstream have in recent weeks gotten a respectful hearing.

Yoseph Haddad, a 38-year-old Christian Arab influencer, has skyrocketed to fame in Israel with his outspoken advocacy for the country in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Haddad told CNN on Oct. 22 that Hamas’s attack was a wakeup call for the Arabs who constitute about 20 percent of Israel’s population.

"We literally felt that Hamas could have conquered the south and then the center and also the north of Israel, where the majority of Arab Israelis are staying, and we had a very bad feeling about it," said Haddad, who has more than 1.5 million followers across social media. "Immediately my friends and colleagues here said, ‘That’s the last thing that we want. We don’t want to live under a terrorist organization. We want to live in a democracy, and that’s what the state of Israel is.’"

In this way, at least, Hamas’ barbarity on Oct. 7—killing and abducting hundreds of civilians, including dozens of Arab Israelis—has strengthened Israel and weakened those who accuse the country of apartheid or genocide.

"It’s astonishing that around the world, some prominent Jews have condemned Israel for its self-defensive reaction to terrorism," Nimrod Nir, a social scientist and pollster at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the Washington Free Beacon. "But here in Israel, the vast majority of Arab citizens legitimize the country’s response."

Haddad noted that a number of Bedouin Israelis heroically saved Jews on Oct. 7. He said many Arabs agree with his advocacy for social integration but have been silenced by the types of extremists who constantly threaten him and his family. However, the "silent voice" of Arab society has grown louder since Hamas’s attack, he said.

Lucy Aharish, 42, Israel’s first Arab mainstream news anchor, endorsed the country’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in an Oct. 13 "message to the world."

"Our beloved country is under attack … [from] a brutal, barbaric, inhumane terror organization," Aharish said in English from her seat on Reshet 13 news. "Don’t be mistaken. We experience difficulties, disagreements, and major disputes, like any other country on this globe. But it does not mean that we will not protect ourselves and our children, our homeland."

"As a Muslim, this is not Islam—what Hamas is doing in the name of religion—this is not being a Muslim," she told CNN days later. "This is being a monster."

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Rallies have figured large in the wake of October 7^th. Not in Israel, mind you. In Israel, we are too busy to hold rallies. We prefer to rally around each other.

Outside of Israel, things are different. There, the rally has become an important vehicle for expressing solidarity; for taking sides, and in some cases, for whipping up the masses to kill Jews.

The rally is many things, but what, in fact, does the rally really achieve for those of us on the side of Israel? It’s all a numbers game, and their numbers will always be larger: There are more of them than us.

Does it matter? Of course it does. The rally is a kind of test; a chance to choose good or evil, though it’s not always cut and dried. There are the sheeple who passively allow themselves to be swayed by the crowd; they just want to fit in. On the other hand, there is true evil, the thugs, and the academics who say they are exhilarated by what happened to the Jews—and the people who tear down posters of Jewish babies held hostage in Gaza.

NYC - New York County public defender Victoria Ruiz caught removing posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.

It is absolutely unacceptable for someone with such bias and hate to serve in your office @nyc_defenders pic.twitter.com/mOwajkuArt
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) November 5, 2023

Evil takes other forms, sometimes in the guise of a Jew who will tell you that as Jew, they say it’s okay to commit atrocities as long as you know the context—as long as you know the history. . .

. . . or the woman who shouts “I’m a rabbi and I demand a ceasefire!” These Jews are sick, sicker, sickest and the very definition of the banality of evil.

It must be said that sometimes, and here there is only one phrase, crude as it is, to describe the phenomenon: the rally is a pissing contest. Sometimes the participants scuffle or worse.

Sometimes someone hits an elderly Jew over the head with a megaphone and kills him, and the police can’t decide if it’s murder.

It’s not all bad, though. There are Jews, pure of heart, who flock to rallies to express anguish and cry out for justice, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.”

That’s very nice. But as I told my relatives on the eve of October 11, “From experience, all of you should stay close to home. I wouldn't go to shul or to rallies. It's not worth the risk, even with beefed up security. Personal safety is more important, and it's bad to be in crowded places. . . Don't be lulled into thinking you're far away and safe. I mean it. Please just stay safe. The rallies don't help us anyway, IMHO.”

The response? “This was an attack on all of us.”

That’s true. I’m glad their eyes are open. But it doesn’t help us in the aftermath. There’s a war, and it is those of us in Israel who must fight it.

What would help us would be unceasing rallies at the White House, protesting Biden’s aid to Iran and Hamas, and his demands for a ceasefire. Short of that, rallies are pretty useless. They may make you feel good, and give you a feeling of communal bonding, but that’s not a good enough reason to get together when it isn’t safe out there for Jews and lovers of justice and light.

***
Our IDF soldiers need ceramic vests to keep them safe as they fight Hamas. We have started a crowdfunding campaign to purchase these vests for my son's platoon: Ceramic Vests for IDF Soldiers.

Even a small donation would be greatly appreciated--each vest costs approximately $520.

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!

No one is talking about it, but Hamas' destruction is nearly as important to most Sunni Arab states as it is too Israel.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood - as is Al Qaeda. Most Arab states passionately hate the "Ikhwan," whose slogan is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

The Muslim Brotherhood goal, which Hamas shares, is to unify all Muslim countries into a single entity ruled by Sharia law.

This is a direct threat to most Arab governments. Yet Muslim Brotherhood-based political parties have significant support in many so-called moderate Arab states, like Jordan or Bahrain where their parties have about 10% of seats.

The biggest blow to the Muslim Brotherhood's political power in recent years was Egypt's crackdown on the group after President Sis deposed the MB's Morsi. It has been in disarray since throughout the Middle East.

If Hamas ends up with any pretense of victory - meaning if it survives in any form - all that could be reversed. It could cause an "Arab winter" where the Muslim Brotherhood would gain hundreds of thousands of followers.

Iran would take advantage of the changed dynamics, and fund the Brotherhood parties and potential allied armed groups. Regimes may topple.

The entire region could be destabilized if the Gaza Islamists remain in power.

They don't say it out loud, but Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Tunisia and Morocco, to name a few, are silently counting on Israel to utterly destroy Hamas.

As always, Israel is forced to act alone because many of the countries that will benefit from the destruction of Hamas have populations that are 90% antisemitic.

Let me emphasize what defeating Hamas means. If they survive in Gaza, they will be regarded as victors. If Israel does a prisoner swap, Hamas will be regarded as heroes. If they are sent into exile, they will be regarded as victors. If they survive for two months, pro-Hamas media will paint that as victory as well. A ceasefire or "humanitarian pause" would help Hamas' optics tremendously in the Arab world.

Like it or not, Israel is now fighting on behalf of the moderate Arab world, and in some ways for the entire free world.

When Israel wins, the Arab world will condemn them loudly and applaud them in silence. The world will only see the condemnations.

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!

11/08 Links Pt1: How Israel tries to protect Gaza's civilians; The memory-holed massacre; Footage of Hamas barbarism shows why ceasefire is not an option

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Israel celebrates breaching ground Hamas didn’t foresee as war enters second month

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to members of Israel’s elite Egoz unit on Tuesday, exactly one month after Hamas’ surprise attack on the country flipped the world upside down. The Egoz unit specializes in guerilla-style warfare and is part of Israel’s commando brigade. It uses special weapons and tactics. “I would like to tell you that what we see on the ground, from the reports the War Cabinet and I receive, and the conversations with commanders and soldiers, it is an extraordinary success. I tell you, the Americans were here. They explained to us what was in Fallujah and what was here and there, and they are amazed at what we have achieved,” Netanyahu told the soldiers at a base in the Negev desert.

The Prime Minister admitted there are challenges. “There are UAVs, IEDs and anti-tank fire. That is true. Sometimes there are very painful losses but all in all, the success is phenomenal because we went in there and hit the enemy – this is a great success. We do not intend to stop; we intend to continue to the end,” he said, according to a statement from Israel’s Government Press Office.

Netanyahu also gave an address to the country on Tuesday. He reiterated that there would be no ceasefire in Gaza without the return of the 240 hostages being held by Hamas and other terror groups.

Israel’s former Minister of Defense Benny Gantz spoke to the country as well in a separate statement. He joined the War Cabinet from the opposition early in the war. He stressed that there would be a time for protests or criticism, but that the country should remain united during the war and support the soldiers. He also referenced the multi-front threats Israel is facing.

That all came as Hezbollah tried to target Israel with an anti-tank missile and fired more than 20 rockets toward northern Israel. The IDF also intercepted “a suspicious aerial target” that flew from Lebanon, likely another Hezbollah drone. Hezbollah has used drones, rockets and anti-tank missile threats often against Israel over the last month. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, gave an interview to NBC in which he threatened escalation if Israel continues its war in Gaza.

The challenges for Israel and the U.S. continue to grow in the region. Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh flew to Turkey on Tuesday. Haniyeh, who lives in Doha, has already visited Iran and consulted with the Iranian foreign minister in Qatar several times. This week’s meetings in Turkey began as pro-regime Tasnim News media in Iran published an article suggesting that Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq and Syria were working as a “single front” to target U.S. forces in the region and also Israel. There have been 40 attacks so far on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Israeli leaders hinted that Hamas will no longer run Gaza when the war is over, but Gantz was light on details on who might run the area after the war. Netanyahu told ABC that Israel would control Gaza for an indefinite period and have security responsibility in the future. Meanwhile, CIA director William J. Burns met with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi on Tuesday as well.

Melanie Phillips: How Israel tries to protect Gaza's civilians

The BBC’s story reveals the remarkably precise and detailed intelligence that Israel possesses on what’s going on in Gaza. It also illustrates the extraordinary lengths to which the Israeli Defence Forces go to spare the lives of Gaza’s civilians. As any dispassionate person who has followed Israel’s wars knows very well, the IDF try everything they can to get enemy civilians out of harm’s way — by leafleting, “knock on the roof” warning shots, phone calls and other means of communication.

No other army in the world has ever done this. When coalition forces bombed Afghanistan or when US forces flattened Mosul, no-one even bothered to mention the civilians who must have been killed there. Yet Israel’s wars repeatedly engulf it in international outrage with accusations that it kills enemy civilians wantonly or deliberately. This is not just a malevolent lie; it could not be a more grotesque inversion of the truth.

The lie is nevertheless perpetrated day in, day out by western media. While the Israelis say they have killed “thousands of Hamas terrorists” in this current war, western media outlets publish Hamas claims that 10,000 “civilians” have been killed — with no attempt whatever to acknowledge that any of these were Hamas operatives and referring only to women and children among the dead.

Sadly, many civilians will unavoidably be killed in Gaza, as in any war. But the wicked distortion that turns the Israelis from scrupulous adherents to the international law requirement to try to avoid civilian deaths into war criminals turns these media outlets into Hamas accomplices.

While the BBC is a principal and habitual offender, it is to its credit that it has published the story related by Mahmoud Shaheen. It says it contacted him after many al-Zahra residents identified him as the man who had received the warning call.

Elsewhere, further evidence of Israel’s concern for Gaza’s civilians has been venomously distorted.

Yesterday, a remarkable video surfaced showing a long line of people streaming from the north of Gaza to the south. The Israelis have repeatedly warned that residents of the north should move to the south for their own safety since the north was about to become Israel’s principal focus for attack.

Some 800,000 Gazans did so, but Hamas tried to stop more joining them by firing on them, in order to keep them in place as human shields. The reason for yesterday’s large line moving south was that, with the IDF now having moved into Gaza City, its tanks could protect the evacuating civilians from Hamas attack. The video, which you can see here, shows this clearly. Yet this is how the Guardian chose to report it:
Waving white flags and holding their hands above their heads, Palestinian families fled past tanks waiting to storm Gaza City in the next stage of the war that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said will give Israel “indefinite” control over the besieged territory.

Israel’s military gave civilians inside the encircled city a four-hour window to leave on Tuesday, as its forces prepared to retake the biggest city in the strip. Men, women and children, some carrying their belongings on donkeys, fled their homes past Israeli troops out of the city.

Posting online, one resident, Adam Fayez Zeyara, said the walk on Tuesday was the most dangerous of his life. “We saw the tanks from point blank. We saw decomposed body parts. We saw death.”

In other words, the Guardian portrayed the Gazans who were being protected by Israeli troops as fleeing from Israeli troops.

By such malevolent misrepresentation, of the kind that the media has habitually promulgated against Israel for decades, the western mind has been poisoned and fatally subverted to endorse evil against its victims.

The memory-holed massacre

This memory-holing takes many forms. Some Hamas spokespeople and their useful idiots continue to actively deny the atrocities. Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas figure, told the BBC this week that ‘women, children and civilians were exempt’ from the 7 October violence, even though civilians were Hamas’s primary targets. Then there are the legions of online cranks, Islamists and anti-Semites who say the worst of 7 October, from the butchering of babies to the rapes of young women, did not actually happen – despite the vast documentary evidence of these crimes, most of it filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves. It’s a kind of ‘Holocaust denial in real time’, as journalist Bari Weiss has described it.

Then there are those who seek to violently erase the memory of the attacks. In New York and London, posters of Israeli hostages have been defaced and torn down. One man scrawled the word ‘coloniser’ over the faces of kidnapped children. So intense is these people’s loathing of Israel, so unhinged is their anti-Semitism, that they cannot bear to be confronted with Jewish suffering, even that endured by children. What happened on 7 October must be forgotten and suppressed, it seems, so that these activists might once again feel at home on the ‘right side of history’.

Others try to reframe the slaughter as a righteous act of resistance. 7 October was ‘a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human-rights worldwide’, according to one pseudo-radical journalist. It has been celebrated as a blow for ‘decolonisation’ by academics the world over. Before the bodies were even cold, a joint statement was issued by 31 social-justice campaign groups at Harvard University, insisting that Israel’s ‘apartheid regime’ be held ‘entirely responsible’ for the unfolding violence. In other words, forget Hamas’s decision to wage a genocidal campaign against Israel’s Jews – Israel is the aggressor here. Massacres like that on 7 October apparently cannot be allowed to intrude on this simplistic identitarian worldview, of colonised against coloniser. And so the grotesque anti-Semitic savagery of Hamas is, at best, excused. At worst, it is rebranded and transformed into a progressive struggle for justice.

Finally, there are those who were unmoved by 7 October, but have leapt at the chance to condemn Israel’s response. Artists for Palestine UK, a group including Tilda Swinton, Steve Coogan and Maxine Peake, has produced an open letter denouncing Western governments for supporting Israel. It makes no mention of Hamas, 7 October or the deaths of 1,400 Israelis. The likes of Swinton or Coogan are far from alone. Centrist dads, woke celebs and leftish politicians are all keen to lecture Israel to lay down its weapons. To render itself defenceless against its tormentors. To surrender its civilian hostages to the enemy. To give free rein to Hamas’s genocidal hostility.

We must not let Hamas’s evil be forgotten, obfuscated or downplayed. The forces of irrationalism and racism that drove this pogrom are arguably even more potent today than they were just one month ago. If we memory-hole this massacre, then we are in serious danger of greenlighting the next one. Those who have excused or denied this evil ought to be ashamed.

Photographers Without Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

AP: Photojournalists or Infiltrators?
Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

HonestReporting has obtained screenshots of Eslaiah’s now-removed tweets on X in which he documented himself standing in front of the Israeli tank. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.”

Masoud, who also works for The New York Times, was there as well — just in time to set foot in Israeli territory and take more tank pictures.

Ali Mahmud and Hatem Ali were positioned to get pictures of the horrific abductions of Israelis into Gaza.

Mahmud captured the pickup truck carrying the body of German-Israeli Shani Louk and Ali got several shots of abductees being kidnapped into the Strip.

Interestingly, the names of the photographers, which appear on other sources, have been removed from some of the photos on AP’s database. Perhaps someone at the agency realized it posed serious questions regarding their journalistic ethics.

Reuters: Lynching as “Image of the Day”
Reuters has published pictures from two photojournalists who also happened to be at the border just in time for Hamas’ infiltration: Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih.

They both took pictures of a burning Israeli tank on the Israeli side of the border, but Abu Mustafa went further: He took photos of a lynch mob brutalizing the body of an Israeli soldier who was dragged out of the tank.

Reuters was kind enough to add a graphic warning to the photo caption, but it didn’t prevent editors from shamelessly labeling it as one of the “Images of the Day” on their editorial database.

Let’s be clear: News agencies may claim that these people were just doing their job. Documenting war crimes, unfortunately, may be part of it. But it’s not that simple.

Kita Anne Frank, Tangerhütte,

Guest post by Josh Namm

When I was growing up, two to three decades after the Shoah, it was assumed that you would read The Diary of Anne Frank, and you understood that, in a way, she represented every victim of the Holocaust. Just invoking her name engendered each emotion every Jew feels when thinking about what had happened to our people. In fact, coming from a secular leaning family in the Los Angeles of the 70s and 80s, there were very few things that connected me, and those like me, to our Jewishness.

This is before Chabad had a shul in every single Jewish (or Jewishy) neighborhood in L.A. (and the rest of the planet).

The list was fairly short: Fiddler on the Roof, whatever deli our family went to on Sundays, Hebrew school, the observance of some Jewish holidays, but always Chanukah, my father’s unshakeable Jewish pride, Jewishy books like My Name Is Asher Lev, Jewish humor, some Yiddish, the occasional playing of “Hava Nagila,” and The Diary of Anne Frank.

That last one was the bedrock of my initial understanding of the Holocaust. That was true of almost everyone in my age group. I knew Holocaust survivors, and the book is what gave me my first real insight into what they had gone through. That was also the case for almost every other kid I knew. It was synonymous with the entire concept of “Never Again” and Holocaust education.

We all assumed that the memory of Anne Frank was inviolable. The depth and emotional resonance of her short life was something that any human, at any time, would find deeply moving. Her story would always be cautionary shorthand for the pure evil that is antisemitism. As Jews, her story is our story and, we thought, would always be the best way to communicate the horror of the Shoah to the rest of the world.

Right?

This Monday (November 7), I woke up to the news that a place called the Anne Frank Daycare Center, in Tangerhütte, Germany, was being renamed. Why? (The Orwellian Newspeak ahead appears in quotes) According to the school, it caved to the demands of “migrant” parents, because the name “Anne Frank” caused a “controversy,” in which those parents felt “uncertain” about the school’s name.

Not to be outdone in the grotesque display of woke absurdity, the city’s mayor said: “The renaming is part of a broader concept that aims to celebrate the diversity of the children attending the daycare center.”

Once again we see that leftism is poison and is a favorite tool of antisemites. We also see that the West, and especially Europe, is intent on committing societal suicide. Apparently, with as much alacrity as it can muster.

Obviously “diversity” doesn’t include Jews. Which should surprise exactly zero Jews because we have never been included in the Left’s diversity calculus.

So, what is really happening here?

A few things, chief among them is that this is yet another avenue for Holocaust denial. Jew-haters hate to be reminded of the Shoah because they hate to be reminded of anything that causes the world to be sympathetic toward us. That is why it has become trendy among the pink haired, but physically puny, hordes of wokesters across the United States to tear down posters of missing Jewish children.

In fact, the favorite pastime of people who hate us is to inflict everything on us they can think of, so that they can then claim to be the victims of that very behavior. They murdered 1,500 innocent Israelis, and then claimed victimhood. That was even before Israel did what every other nation would do in the same situation. Now that Israel is taking care of business, and their business is keeping Jews safe at all costs: the whining has expanded exponentially.

But you can’t “tear down” Anne Frank like the hostage posters. Her face, her story, and in a weird way, even her voice, are embedded in the Western psyche. She can’t just be wished away. So instead, they are attempting to erase her name.

The school’s new name is to be “World Explorers.” That’s as catchy as tangling with the IRS. It reminds me of when a certain Washington DC football team was renamed the “Commanders,” and a certain Cleveland baseball team was renamed the “Guardians.” The fact that the previous names were rooted in both teams’ history, and related to the warrior quality valuable to the psyche of competitive sports, or that the new names were related to…nothing…was meaningless. The point was that the few had deemed the thing loved by the many to be “offensive.”

The trend is to rename anything that is deemed “distasteful” (or inconvenient) to some non-descript, non-threatening, generic name. Doing so allows the re-namers to pretend that they vanquished some imaginary evil. They feel virtuous, while the rest of us lose a piece of our shared culture.

Which is the entire point. They diminish, demonize, and destroy, while the replacement is ALWAYS something deemed “acceptable,” i.e. generic and boring. Because generic is always boring and boring is harmless. Boring doesn’t cause people to think, feel, or to be curious. Boring is non-threatening.

The memory of the Shoah is threatening. Or, let me put it this way, if you are threatened by the memory of the Shoah, you are an antisemite.

I am NOT comparing the names of sports teams to Anne Frank. But what we can learn from those incidents is that Arab Islamists, Jew haters, have learned the language and tactics of Western leftists to become more effective at marginalizing Jewish communities. Part of that strategy is to always play the victim. No longer content with committing heinous acts of terror, they have internalized the lessons of these Orwellian tactics, lessons which have taught them that language controls not just thought, but feelings. And when you control thoughts and feelings, the inversion of reality become possible. So, the Jews become evil colonizers, while Hamas terrorists are their righteous victims.

Stripping the Anne Frank Daycare Center of the name of the most famous Jewish girl in history, is then shifted from a heinous act of despicable Holocaust revisionism, to a “sensitive” act of “inclusion,” designed to satisfy the needs of “migrant” parents.

That this is allowed to happen in Germany should be like a sudden hard punch to the face. But it is not. We have been watching the West travel down this road, with intent, for decades. But it’s hard to imagine that a few decades ago this would have been possible. Not because antisemitism had been eliminated in Germany (I almost fell over laughing just typing that), but because the West, particularly Germany, still felt enough shame about the Shoah to at least PRETEND to still try to be atoning for it.

(Spoiler alert Germany: there is no atoning for it).

In a final note of woke idiocy, also relayed in Orwell’s Newspeak, the town newspaper said this:

“Ultimately, the parents and employees wanted a name that was more 'child-friendly' and 'better suited to their concept.' Their needs are more important than the global political situation.”

Which, of course, makes no sense. Anne Frank is one of the most famous children ever to have lived. Their true “concept” is for the facility to be judenrein. And it can only be “in concept” because there are so few Jewish children in Germany today, I doubt that there are any Jewish kinderlach within 50 miles of the place. The daycare center must be free of actual Jewish children, and free of anything that humanizes the Jewish people.

The reason for why there are so few of us in Germany, the Holocaust, and why Jews, an obvious minority, don’t matter in the “diversity” calculation is exactly why erasing Anne Frank’s name should be seen as a major cultural capitulation by a weak, pathetic, and feckless West.

As for their mention of the “global political situation,” that just proves again that what is happening in Israel was never about land, imaginary occupations, or any other fake grievance: it is about us, the Jews.

All of us.

This definitely has all of the ingredients of 1933 part deux.

Or should I say “part zwei”?

No. What I am going to say is: WAKE UP. The West can’t afford to remain complacent once more while evil is allowed to grow unchecked. Never again is now.

Never give up. Never give in.

Am Yisrael Chai.