Reality check — intifada has nothing to do with genocide of Jews
When New York Rep. Elise Stefanik repeatedly — and now infamously — badgered three college presidents about the nuances of free speech last week, she attempted to push her narrative that elite schools are antisemitic by equating “chants for intifada” with “genocide of Jews.”
The three presidents fell for the trap that a Palestinian uprising could be connected to crimes against humanity.
I was a journalist for Al Fajr, a Palestinian weekly, in the late 1980s, when the first intifada began. The word appeared on leaflets in the title of a Palestinian Liberation Organization-backed group: the Underground Unified National Leadership of the Intifada.
Dan Fisher, then the Jerusalem bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, asked me to translate it. “Intifada” means “shaking off,” I told him, a reference to the demand for freedom from occupation. Palestinians opposed the occupation, not Israel. Palestinians’ aspirations were for an independent state alongside Israel, not instead of Israel.
This is gaslighting.It is akin to the stupid argument that "antisemitism" means "against Semites." Words and phrases evolve in meaning and today, "intifada" is understood by all Israel haters to mean violence.] (The idea that Palestinians would accept a permanent Jewish state in any form is simply a lie.)
It is not only Kuttab trying mightily to redefine "intifada" this week - here is Judith Butler in Boston Review:
Intifada, generally translated as “uprising” in Arabic, means “to be shaken” or “to shake oneself.” It is understood as a movement that refuses to remain docile in the face of colonial violence, an effort to throw off the shackles of colonial rule. It is also a call for Palestinian unity. Does it necessarily imply genocidal violence? No.
Again, gaslighting.
When the word "intifada" is used by both Palestinians and protesters today, it means nothing other than violence.
The first intifada, while violent, was not characterized by the horrific suicide bombings and bus bombs of the second intifada, or as Palestinians celebrate it, it the "Al Aqsa Intifada."
In Arabic Palestinian media, however, the word "intifada" by itself is always understood to mean the second intifada.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey research routinely asks in their polls how people want to respond to Israel,. The latest poll released yesterday includes choices of "unarmed popular resistance" and "a return to confrontations and armed intifada."
Not once have they referred to unarmed resistance as an "intifada." The Palestinians who are answering the questions wouldn't even understand a question that asks about an unarmed intifada.
Finally, the people behind the "Globalize the Intifada" slogan itself make no secret of their support for violence. After all, they are the same people who also chant "by any means necessary."
The Within Our Lifetime group, one of the key organizers of these protests demanding an intifada, write on its "Points of Unity page,"We defend the right of Palestinians as colonized people to resist the zionist occupation by any means necessary. ...We believe the liberation of Palestine will be achieved through the initiative and strategy of all forms of Palestinian resistance." This means violence, and that is exactly what they mean when they say "intifada." These groups applauded the violent pogroms of October 7. Their leader, Nerdeen Kiswani, has promoted violence against "Zionists" and called for their deaths.
There is no doubt among both Palestinians and anti-Israel activists as to what the word "intifada" means.
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In a country where every child is a miraculous reaffirmation of Jewish resilience against the attempts over the course of more than two millennia to wipe out the Jewish people, the death of every one of these young Israeli soldiers tears open the historic wound.
This war has many midwives. A reckoning is due in Israel itself for the role played in the October 7 catastrophe by the governing class, from the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu down through the top brass of the IDF and security establishment. And both the Obama and Biden administrations in the US bear a heavy responsibility for having empowered and incentivised Iran, the infernal godfather and patron of Hamas and Hezbollah.
But the fundamental reason for this war is that the world will not permit the Jews to live in peace and security in their own ancestral homeland. There is no other conflict in the world in which the west has encouraged, funded and incentivised those waging a war of annihilation as the west has done with the “Palestinians” for the best part of a century. There is no other conflict in the world in which an indigenous people that is the victim of existential attack is regarded as aggressive interlopers, and their defence against annihilation wickedly misrepresented as deliberate mass killing and even genocide, as much of the west has done with Israel.
More Israeli soldiers are being killed than would otherwise be unavoidable because, in this as in every war in which Israel is forced to fight against an enemy bent on the extermination of the Jews, the west insists that Israel go to lengths to which these countries themselves would never go to protect the lives of its enemy civilians — lengths which cause more IDF casualties than if Israel had a free hand to defend its people.
And unlike the west, which usually wages war from the safe distance of the skies, Israel puts boots on the booby-trapped ground, with its commanders leading from the front and dying heroically alongside their sergeants and privates.
Not only does the west refuse to acknowledge Israel’s desperate plight; not only does it display indifference to Jewish suffering in Israel; but those demanding an Israeli cease-fire or that the IDF put its own forces at risk in order further to protect Gaza’s civilians are also making it shockingly plain that, if there’s a choice between the lives of Israelis defending themselves against genocide and the unintentional killing of Palestinians in a just war waged by Israel for its survival, it’s the Jews who must die.
May the memory of all of Israel’s fallen children in the lion-hearted IDF — Jews, Arabs, Druze and others — be a blessing. And may their sacrifice not be in vain.
The two letters need to be taken in tandem. Washington’s words to Newport’s Jews express the idea of American equality, but it is Washington’s letter to Savannah that reminds us how the Founders revered the Jewish story and sought succor from the Jewish faith. It explains why Jews were so warmly welcomed in America, as well as why so many Americans support Israel today. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reflected, the Founders’ reverence for the Hebrew Bible reflects the fact that “Israel, ancient and modern, and the United States are the two supreme examples of societies constructed in conscious pursuit of an idea.”
The story of Washington’s letters is instructive as American Jews confront the specter of anti-Israel Jew-hate in the United States. It is right to emphasize, as Lipstadt did, that bigotry toward any community in America is un-American, and to cite Washington in making that case. But it is also vital to stress what is also learned from the words that Washington himself composed: the deep and long-lasting bond between Judaism and the American idea, and therefore the deep antipathy of Israel-haters for America.
The pro-Hamas rallies proclaiming their support for jihad are reflecting not only their hatred of Jewry and of Israel, but also their hatred of America itself. The two hatreds are joined; those seeking the destruction of the Jews living “from the river to the sea” instinctively understand that the bond between American and Israel is more than pragmatic, and the rallies’ defense of utter evil in the name of “decolonization” reflects a set of ideas proclaiming that America itself is a villain and unworthy of existence. There is a reason why the Jewish gathering on the Mall featured countless American flags, while the mobs in New York, Philadelphia, and the quads of the Ivy League raging “long live the intifada” feature nary a one.
Washington famously concluded his letter to Newport’s Jews with the prayer that “the children of the stock of Abraham” dwell in safety and security in America, where “there shall be none to make them afraid.” Unfortunately, the children of the stock of Abraham in America are afraid, and for good reason. But there is still succor and inspiration to be found: from a Jewry that is experiencing more unity than at most points in American history, and in a vast swath of Americans who understand the bond between the Jewish and American stories. It is this that must be emphasized, as we remind our fellow citizens that what is at stake in this battle is not only the future of American Jewry, but of the American idea—and therefore of America itself.
The Harvard Crimson, which limply and unenthusiastically substantiated reports of Gay's decades-long record of plagiarism, talked to scholars like Lawrence Bobo—one of the many authors from whom Gay cribbed, er, inadequately cited—who told the paper he was "unconcerned" that Gay quoted him and his colleague, Gary King, without proper attribution.
Sure, Gay violated the standards to which Harvard holds its own students. Sure, she did the same and worse to dozens of other scholars. But Harvard's 30th president isn't a plagiarist. And besides, isn't imitation the highest form of flattery? Take notes, Harvard students. And Princeton students. And Amherst students.
What the Crimson didn't mention is that Bobo, the dean of social sciences at Harvard, was appointed to his role five years earlier by Gay, when she was dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She's not just his boss, she's his patron. Gay's dissertation adviser, Gary King, and her former classmate, Stephen Voss, also defended the Ivy League apparatchik who absconded with their work.
What none of them, least of all the members of the Harvard Corporation, want to say out loud is that Gay wasn't tapped for her scholarship, and they aren't about to hold her to the standards of a serious scholar. Obviously.
No, Gay was chosen for a different set of credentials—her race, gender, political views, and religious devotion to DEI—and she is delivering on her promise to rededicate the university to identity politics.
To that end, she engineered the defenestration of Roland Fryer, allegedly on Title IX charges, after the star black economist ruffled feathers by debunking myths of rampant police violence. She helped strip Ronald Sullivan, a black Harvard Law professor, of an administrative post because he served on Harvey Weinstein's defense team. She even dismissed allegations of research fraud against Ryan Enos, a Harvard government professor, who just so happened to find that Republicans are racist—a recurring theme in Gay's own (well, not really) work.
In her disgraceful testimony before Congress, in which Gay was asked whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state and responded, "I believe Israel has the right to exist"—not necessarily as a Jewish state—she was doing the job for which she was hired, in the way she was hired to do it. And the Harvard Corporation, in reaping the media whirlwind and tossing standards aside (again) to save its gal, is getting exactly what it asked for.
Even at that young age, I knew that to check that black box was to move off the merit track and onto the race track, where people like Claudine Gay excel. She is perhaps the most successful black to walk this path, but she is not a free individual.
Throughout her career, Gay has placed emphasis on her skin color and the politics of the black identity, which we are now learning involved a brew of incompetence, racial essentialism, and plagiarism, all emerging now.
As bad as this all is, the worst thing that the Claudine Gays of America did was lead so many people of their race down this dead-end path of racial essentialism.
Today, the focus has been on how Gay hurt Asians and Jews, but it can never be forgotten that people like her hurt blacks far more and for such a sustained period of time, affecting multiple generations.
My refusal to check the race box meant that no one could hold a claim over me. I’m a free individual, and the only thing I owe is gratitude to the many people who helped me as I pursued the path of merit.
But if one really wants to know why I never checked the black box, the true answer lies in my black grandfather’s life. Born to formerly enslaved parents on a dirt floor in Camp Nelson, Kentucky, his parents died when he was just a teen. On his own, he traveled to Detroit and then to Chicago, where he worked odd jobs to fuel his playboy lifestyle. Then one day, he realized his current life would lead to no good. He straightened up and became a founding member of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), where he met my grandmother. He got a job as a truck driver, became a family man, and educated himself by reading every book he could find. In doing so, he lifted his family from poverty to a solid lower-middle-class life despite living under segregation.
Why, then, would I betray this admirable progress for the empty promise of skin color?
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
Liz Magill, with her smug smile and inability to denounce calls
for the genocide of the Jewish people, disgraced herself and UPenn. No one
wonders why she resigned. The question is why Julie Platt, chair of the Jewish
Federations of North America’s board of trustees, saw fit to defend Magill,
when all the other Jewish leaders were vocal in their demands that Magill step
down. A second question we might ask is why Platt, who also serves as vice
chair of UPenn’s board of trustees, is now overseeing the search for Magill’s
replacement.
That’s right—Platt, after defending Magill—is in charge of finding
a new Magill, likely every bit as antisemitic as the one who stepped down in
disgrace. How do we know? Because Platt’s defense of Magill predates
the events of October 7th, says Alana Goodman, writing for the Washington
Free Beacon on December 8 (emphasis added):
Platt’s defense of Magill predates the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
She stood by the UPenn president when the school played host to the
"Palestine Writes" conference in September, an event that featured
anti-Semitic speakers. This included Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, who has
"dressed in a Nazi-like uniform" and "desecrated the memory of
Holocaust victim Anne Frank," according to a letter sent to the school by
the Jewish Federation’s Philadelphia chapter.
In October, when Apollo CEO Marc Rowan called on Magill to
resign from the UPenn board after Magill declined to condemn Hamas terrorism, Platt
publicly backed the UPenn president, saying she had "full confidence
in the leadership of President Liz Magill and Chair Scott Bok."
"The university has publicly committed to unprecedented
steps to further combat antisemitism on its campus, reaffirmed deep support for
our Jewish community, and condemned the devastating and barbaric attacks on
Israel by Hamas," said Platt in a statement to the New York Post.
But Platt has been noticeably silent after Magill’s shocking
congressional testimony this week, during which she and other Ivy League
presidents said calls for Jewish genocide were permitted on campuses. Platt, a
former banker, is also co-chair of UPenn Hillel's National Board of Governors
and sits on the board of overseers for the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic
Studies, according to her biography on the Penn Alumni website.
Three days later, Goodman offered her readers a shocking
update—the fox, in the form of Julie Platt, was now guarding the hen house (emphasis
added):
Julie Platt, a prominent Jewish leader who repeatedly
defended Magill as anti-Semitism surged on campus, will serve as interim chair
of the Board of Trustees during the search for a new president. Platt, who was
previously vice chair, will replace the board's outgoing leader, Scott Bok, who
resigned alongside Magill on Saturday.
"As current Vice Chair, Julie was the clear choice, and
we are grateful to her for agreeing to serve in this capacity during this time
of transition," the board said in a statement on Sunday.
Critics told the Washington Free Beacon last week that Platt—who
is also chair of the Jewish Federations of North America's board of
trustees—leveraged her Jewish community leadership role to protect Magill's
position at the university for months.
Platt defended Liz Magill as UPenn hosted an anti-Israel
conference with antisemite Roger Waters, and after October 7th, when
Magill refused to condemn Hamas terrorism. But in her official
JFNA statement on her appointment as interim chair, Platt wants you to know
that all this time, she was “working hard from the inside” to address the rising
antisemitism on the UPenn campus—in the form of defending Magill’s indefensible
defense of Jew-hatred, of course (emphasis added):
As Vice Chair of the university’s board these past several
months, I have worked hard from the inside to address the rising issues of
antisemitism on campus.
Unfortunately, we have not made all the progress that we should have and
intend to accomplish. In my view, given
the opportunity to choose between right and wrong, the three university
presidents testifying in the United States House of Representatives failed. The
leadership change at the university was therefore necessary and
appropriate. I will continue as a
board member of the university to use my knowledge and experience of Jewish
life in North America and at Penn to accelerate this critical work.
Platt is clever, if somewhat devious, when she tells us that she has “worked
hard from the inside” to address antisemitism. If the work she did was from “inside,”
we didn’t see it, so we don’t know what she did, or how much effort she
expended on fighting antisemitism, sight unseen. The ruse almost works, except
that the whole world has been watching, or at least the Algemeiner,
which documented the number of times Magill gave free rein to antisemitism, as Platt
continued to defend her:
Magill had several previous opportunities throughout her
tenure to denounce hateful, even conspiratorial, rhetoric directed at both
Israel and the Jewish community. However, Magill repeatedly declined to respond
to the mounting incidents of antisemitism, especially anti-Zionism, on campus,
according to an analysis by [the Algemeiner] of public
statements she had issued since July 2022, when she assumed the presidency at
Penn.
“Israel is a settler colonial state that uses apartheid to
further its ethnic cleansing agenda,” said an
essay by Penn Against the Occupation (POA) that was included in
the 2022-2023 edition of the Penn Disorientation Guide, a
symposium of essays published annually by upperclassmen. It was issued just
weeks after Magill started on the job.
“It is time to end the way our school helps to perpetrate
human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and
organize around divesting from Israel,” the essay continued. “Here’s what you
should know about divestment, a popular movement to fight for equality for
Palestinians.”
POA went on to charge the university with numerous offenses:
Penn “normalizes ties with the occupation” by hosting the Perspectives
Fellowship, a program the school’s Hillel chapter founded to educate students
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by taking them on a trip to Israel, as
well as Gaza and the West Bank. Penn’s support of Birthright, which sends
Jewish students to Israel, “turns a blind eye to the crimes of the Israeli
occupation.” Both programs, POA said, “frame the Zionist colonial entity in a
positive light.”
Later that semester, after campus police arrested radical
student environmentalists for staging an unauthorized protest on school
grounds, POA said in an Instagram
post that “arresting peaceful protesters is a staple of policing in
both the United States and in Israeli-Occupied Palestine.” The group drew a
link between the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels to Israel,
saying, “We urge Penn not only to divest from all fossil fuel companies but
divest from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, many of which are one
in the same … policies of forced displacement, from Palestine to the UC
townhomes in Philadelphia, are all modern-day practices of settler
colonialism.”
Neither Magill nor the university responded to the apparent
accusation that the Jewish state, conspiring with the US, has caused climate
change and colonized both Americans and Palestinians.
The next month, on Nov. 6, POA held a screening of Gaza
Fights for Freedom “with snacks provided” in Penn’s Van Pelt Library. The
film rationalizes the terrorist acts committed during the Palestinian intifadas
against Israel and features a clip of an interview with Hamas co-founder
Mahmoud Al-Zahar, who can be heard saying, “We run effective self-defense by
all means including using guns.”
The film was directed by Abby Martin, a 9/11 conspiracy
theorist and a former host on the Russian-funded media network RT America.
Martin, who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, reposted on social media posts
that celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
It doesn't seem like Platt was working hard from inside, if at all. Why did Platt, an important Jewish leader, stand by, as
Magill proved, without a doubt, over and over again, that she is an Israel-hating antisemite? Even now, Magill affirms her anti-Jewish creds, most recently during
the infamous hearing that led to her resignation. There, Rep. Virginia Foxx
(R-NC) asked all three Ivy League university presidents, including Magill, a
loaded (and exquisitely worded) question:
Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation?
Just as the three women answered in chorus on “conduct,” “context,” and parroted the words “pervasive and severe,” here too, the women echoed one another in both what they said—Israel can exist—and what they didn’t say, “but not as a Jewish nation”:
Virginia Foxx: Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation?
Claudine Gay: I agree that the State of Israel has a right to exist.
Virginia Foxx: Ms. Magill, same question.
Liz Magill: I agree, Chairwoman Foxx. (nodding) The State of Israel has a right to exist.
Virginia Foxx: Dr. Kornbluth?
Sally Kornbluth: Absolutely. Israel has the right to exist.
With their collective response to that one question, Magill
and her friends made clear their unified belief that Jews do not have the
right to self-determination in Israel. And still, Platt stayed dumb (emphasis
added):
In October, when Apollo CEO Marc Rowan called on Magill to
resign from the UPenn board after Magill declined to condemn Hamas
terrorism, Platt publicly backed the UPenn president, saying she had "full
confidence in the leadership of President Liz Magill and Chair Scott
Bok."
"The university has publicly committed to unprecedented
steps to further combat antisemitism on its campus, reaffirmed deep support for
our Jewish community, and condemned the devastating and barbaric attacks on
Israel by Hamas," said Platt in a statement to the New York Post.
But Platt has been noticeably silent after Magill’s
shocking congressional testimony this week, during which she and other Ivy
League presidents said calls for Jewish genocide were permitted on campuses.
Platt, a former banker, is also co-chair of UPenn Hillel's National Board of
Governors and sits on the board of overseers for the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic
Studies, according to her biography on the Penn Alumni website.
Why did Platt, a highly-placed Jewish leader, stick to a university president who wouldn’t condemn Hamas terror or calls for genocide? Are they friends? It seems unlikely, as the two women are almost a decade apart in age.
What then? Did Platt aim by design to rise up the UPenn chain of command to the level of interim chair, and perhaps, beyond? Put her own guy in? Who knows? She’s not talking, and neither is the CEO of the Jewish Federation:
Platt didn’t respond when the Free Beacon asked her on [December 6] to comment on Magill’s testimony. Eric Fingerhut, the CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, also didn’t respond to a request for comment about Platt’s defense of Magill.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The latest survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reveals that Palestinians, as a whole, are thoroughly delusional.
As we've seen in other polls, the overwhelming majority support Hamas' terror attack on October 7. Even after seeing the devastation in Gaza, a huge majority (72%; 82% in the West Bank and 57% in the Gaza Strip) said Hamas attacking Israel was a correct decision.
But almost none of them admit that Hamas has done any war crimes.
Only 10% of Palestinians think Hamas committed any war crimes, and only 7% think that Hamas committed atrocities against Israelis on October 7. . Only 14% saw videos of Hamas attacking Israelis.
The early narrative in Arab media is that Hamas was heroic and the attack was purely military, so it appears that the people swallowed that whole - and have very little interest in learning anything that might change their minds.
Of course, nearly all Palestinians agree Israel is committing war crimes.
There is one war crime that the Palestinians cannot possibly deny, which is that Hamas took civilians hostage. So to answer another question about whether kidnapping civilians is a war crime, nearly half simply reported that it wasn't - so they could keep thinking of Hamas as being moral.
The Palestinians in the West Bank are even more deluded than Gazans are. 70% of West Bankers think Hamas will emerge victorious in this war, while only half of Gazans think so. Only 1% in the West Bank think Israel will emerge victorious, but nearly one third of Gazans think so.
72% (85% in the West Bank and 52% in the Gaza Strip) are satisfied with how Hamas is doing during the war. The outside country that they are most pleased with during the war is Yemen (80% approval; 89% in the West Bank and 68% in the Gaza Strip.)
Hamas' popularity has skyrocketed. When asked which political party they support, the largest percentage selected Hamas (43%), followed by Fatah (17%). Support for Hamas nearly doubled since the last time the question was asked three months ago.
Similarly, if new parliamentary elections were held today, Hamas'party would trounce Fatah, 51%-19%.
54% believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today, also double the number three months ago.
The percentage that supports a return to terrorism ("confrontations and armed intifada") went from 58% to 69% - more than two-thirds.
The poll shows that the most intransigent, militant and terror-supporting Palestinians are the ones whom the world thinks is "moderate"- the ones in the West Bank ruled by the PA. Hamas is more popular there than in Gaza. The overwhelming majority want to see Israel destroyed (as the last poll showed.)
This is the most important story that the Western media is actively hiding from you.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Israel is resolved to remove Hamas and its terrorist infrastructure from the Gaza Strip permanently, and for much of the world, its determination raises one question more than any other: What comes next in Gaza? For those who disapprove of Israel’s actions in the war or those who either passively or actively support the role of Hamas as the Strip’s governing authority, the lack of answers provides a pretext not only to demand a permanent cease-fire but to suggest (often quietly and with a furrowed brow indicating supposed realpolitik wisdom) that the path Israel seems to be making for itself is a dead end from which it needs to be saved.
For the Arab world, the vacuum creates a jockeying for power and influence, albeit behind the scenes to avoid accountability for anything that goes wrong.
For the Biden administration, this has invited fantasies of a renewed path to an ever-elusive two-state solution—a Palestinian Authority governing a unified West Bank and Gaza, and supposedly representing the views of all Palestinians in negotiations with Israel. Big ideas for Gaza’s future are being cooked up behind closed doors in Washington. Task forces and blue-ribbon commissions are sure to follow. But allowing the Washington establishment to paint a foreign policy on a blank canvas, mapping the relations between Israel and the Arabs surrounding it, is a risky proposition that will, as it always has in the past, fail.
If Washington and Jerusalem share an end-state objective of a Gaza that can never again pose a terror threat to Israel, and the president himself has said repeatedly that we do share this objective, the question about the future needs to be reframed. Instead of asking what comes next, leaders in both capitals should be asking: What cannot come next? Answering that question is the only way to establish the parameters for a viable path forward that precludes the known ingredients for policy failure.
Let us lay out some of those parameters.
First, Gaza has no future with Hamas or other terrorist groups involved. Perhaps obvious to some but not to all, Hamas and other terrorist organizations cannot be part of Gaza’s future. Demands for a cease-fire in Gaza before Hamas is dismantled would guarantee that the territory remains a base of terror operations indefinitely. Relenting to international pressure or Hamas psychological-warfare tactics to extend the cease-fire to a permanent condition would doom the future of Gaza (and Israel).
Unimaginative naysayers and Hamas apologists alike will try to persuade us there is no military solution to Hamas, only a political one. That is a lie that Israel’s military can expose if given the opportunity to finish the job.
Failing to halt Israel’s military objectives, Hamas supporters in the West and those who oppose Israel’s self-assertions more generally will grow more desperate. They will move beyond urging Congress and the White House to “condition” aid to Israel as a method of halting the Jewish state’s campaign to destroy Hamas and prevent another October 7 massacre, which is the line taken up by Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy and members of the “squad” in the House of Representative. Adding conditions to American security assistance to Israel—a fellow democracy that upholds the rule of law and is now fighting for its survival—should not be deemed a “worthwhile thought,” as President Biden claimed over the Thanksgiving weekend. Rather, it is a proposal aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to defend itself that would lead, logically, to the eventual annihilation of the Jewish state.
Pro-Israel Democrats in Congress have already publicly rejected the idea. And with a Republican-controlled House, there’s no path for Hamas to achieve this objective in Washington legislatively. President Biden might have the executive power to withhold critical military support from Israel when Jerusalem calls for resupply, but with a recent NBC News survey showing independent voters favoring military assistance to Israel, and Democrats evenly split, Biden would pay a steep political price for doing so. (Republicans overwhelmingly favor Israel.)
Assuming Israel stays the course (with U.S. backing), Hamas will lose control of Gaza in the weeks and months ahead. Its tunnels will be destroyed, its leadership eliminated. But Jerusalem and Washington will still need to prevent its supporters from finding a path back to power through Western-supported mechanisms.
Those who pushed Israel in 2006 into accepting Palestinian elections that included Hamas should not repeat their mistakes. We should expect attempts by Hamas’s ideological supporters to sponsor a new group with a new name to regain a foothold in Gaza’s governance and ultimately participate in any future Palestinian election—the vehicle Hamas first used to gain control 17 years ago.
Anyone who claims to champion the cause of Palestinian freedom and independence should focus on establishing the rule of law and protecting basic rights within Palestinian territories before proposing elections. And any future elections should prohibit political parties that refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, let alone those that advocate its destruction.
Nearly three in four Palestinians believe that Hamas was right in launching its Oct. 7 cross-border attack, in which terrorists savagely murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel and wounded thousands, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
The Ramallah-based institute polled 1,231 Palestinian adults in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2. (The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points, the PSR said.)
The authoritative survey—the second of its kind since Oct. 7—found that 72% of respondents think Hamas was “correct” in carrying out its mass slaughter, while 22% characterized the terrorist group’s decision to attack as “incorrect.”
A whopping 89% of the respondents denied that Palestinian terrorists committed war crimes on Oct. 7, while 95% claimed that Israel breached international law during its defensive operation against Hamas in Gaza.
During a press conference with Britain’s new foreign secretary, former prime minister David Cameron, in Washington last Thursday evening, Blinken was asked how much longer the war could go on. “We strongly support Israel’s efforts to ensure that it can effectively defend itself,” he said.
“In conversations with the Israelis we talk about how long this campaign will take and also how it will be prosecuted. These are decisions for Israel.”
But senior Israeli Defense Forces officials are said to privately admit that the latest stage of the conflict, the attack on the city of Khan Yunis, the largest in southern Gaza, will probably be the war’s final wide-scale ground offensive.
Of course, this does not mean Israel will afterwards agree to a ceasefire, but it may allow for a scaling-down of operations. The Israeli army could then transition to a strategy of smaller raids on Hamas strongholds using targeted mobile forces, rather than the current use of entire armoured divisions occupying parts of the Gaza Strip for weeks.
The IDF estimates that they have killed somewhere between 5,000 to 6,000 terrorists — or a fifth of the number that Hamas claimed it had under arms. That means 25,000 terrorists remain signed up to Israel’s destruction.
But the damage wrought on Hamas’s capability to wage future terrorist attacks should not be underestimated. Many lower-level commanders will have been killed or injured, the group’s command and control structure will be in tatters and much of its weaponry will have been destroyed. Many of the terrorist foot soldiers may also now be more worried about the security of their own families than waging a war which will only end with their own messy death. It is also easy to imagine that while many Palestinians will blame Israel for their suffering now and in the future, others will rightly blame Hamas.
So, Sinwar’s death, when it inevitably comes, will represent a notable win and will offer Israel a way out of the conflict with an achievable end game.
Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan held a sign showing the phone number of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s Hamas office, at a UN General Assembly meeting on Tuesday.
“You want a real ceasefire?” Erdan declared, admonishing UNGA members to ask him directly as he held up a sign depicting Sinwar’s office phone number, since the terrorist mastermind and Hamas bear the real responsibility for the current conflict, not Israel.
“Call… and ask for Yahya Sinwar. Tell Hamas to put down their arms, turn themselves in, and return our hostages. This will bring a complete ceasefire that will last forever,” Erdan said.
UN resolution calls for Gaza ceasefire
The United Nations General Assembly called for a Gaza ceasefire in a 153-10 vote, with 23 countries abstaining hours after US President Joe Biden warned Israel it was losing support for its campaign to oust Hamas.
The resolution, the second of its kind since the war began on October 7, was greeted with applause.
The United States and Israel opposed the measure, as did Austria, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, and Paraguay.
During today’s meeting at the @UN, I told the ambassadors in the General Assembly that everyone in the room knows what Moscow, Beijing, or Istanbul would do if they were in Israel's shoes. Hamas committed terrible crimes and those who support a ceasefire allow Hamas to continue… pic.twitter.com/IPi7NwJTK1
Seth Mandel writes at Commentary about how Joe Biden, unlike Barack Obama, passes the "kishkes" test for his deep affinity with Israel, by proudly calling himself a Zionist and defending Israel.
Which may be one reason why we have not heard much criticism about this outrageous accusation Biden made yesterday.
Speaking to Democratic donors in Washington, Biden voiced criticism of Israel’s hardline government and said Netanyahu needed to alter his approach.
“I think he has to change, and with this government, this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move,” Biden said, calling Netanyahu’s government the “most conservative government in Israel’s history.”
He warned support for the country’s military campaign is waning amid heavy bombardment of Gaza and added that the Israeli government “doesn’t want a two-state solution.”
Biden said right now Israel “has most of the world supporting it,” but said “they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
Maybe it was a slip of the tongue. Maybe it is senility. But the President of the United States just falsely accused Israel a war crimes.
Indiscriminate bombing is what Hamas does. Rockets targeting civilian areas without precise aiming are indiscriminate. That is war crime, violating the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets. (Placing military targets in the midst of civilian objects i also a violation of that principle.)
Israel does not bomb indiscriminately. It spends a great deal of time choosing its targets and calibrating the attacks based on the military value of the targets. Just because the casual observer cannot see that there is a Hamas commander or a Hamas command and control center or a Hamas weapons cache inside or beneath the building does not make the airstrikes indiscriminate.
The widespread damage in Gaza is a direct result of Hamas using civilians as their primary defensive shield. The IDF is finding weapons literally everywhere they search and they have found tunnel entrances in schools, in many houses and beneath old cars planted there to hide them. Hamas turned all of Gaza into a military target, not Israel, and it is enormously difficult to make that distinction - but the IDF still attacks based on intelligence information. It is not random and it is not indiscriminate.
Israel is apparently sweeping this under the rug to preserve the relationship, but that doesn't make the lie any less vile.
Friends don't falsely accuse friends of war crimes.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
As I said after the attack, my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist is independent Jew- — as an independent Jewish state is un- — just unshakeable.
Folks, were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe — were there no Israel. (Applause.)
It might have played to the room, but it is an astonishing statement for the President of the United States to make. He is saying that Jews aren't even safe in the nation he leads without Israel.
Arguably, the USA has been the friendliest nation towards Jews since the Kingdom of Judah. But let's do a thought experiment: how would things be for Jews in America without an Israel?
The most straightforward wat to begin to answer this is to compare antisemitism in America before and after 1948.
1947 want ad
Antisemitism in America was quite prevalent before World War II. But more surprisingly, it kept getting worse during and after the war. There was no additional sympathy for Jews who had suffered the Holocaust - on the contrary, it seemed to accelerate Jew-hatred in the US.
Here are the percentage of Americans who answered "yes" to the question "Do you think Jews have too much power in America" from 1938-1946:
March, 1938 41%
April, 1940 43%
February, 1941 45%
October, 1941 48%
May, 1944 56%
June, 1945 58%
February, 1946 55%
Far more than half of Americans held classic antisemitic attitudes even when the scope of the genocide became clear.
Things started changing in 1948. The B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League started their annual antisemitism survey only a couple of years beforehand, but 1947-1948 were the years where things started to turn around.
That doesn't prove that Zionism had anything to do with it. It was during those years that the US started tackling all kinds of discrimination, and returning soldiers tended to have fewer prejudices. However, Zionism does seem to have been one indirect reason for the turnaround.
As the horrors of World War II were becoming apparent, nearly every major American Jewish organization joined a unified umbrella organization called the American Jewish Conference to work for a national Jewish state in Palestine. This was perhaps the first time that so many American Jewish organizations united.
This new political clout prompted them to then attack the second major topic of concern to American Jews - antisemitism. And for that, even the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism joined the new Community Relations Advisory Council created to fight antisemitism in America.
They were well organized, and went after what they saw as the biggest three targets: discrimination against Jews in employment, in immigration, and in education. They framed the fight against antisemitism as one component of the fight against all prejudice, and they convinced local, state and eventually national political groups to pass anti-discrimination laws. They monitored compliance and held organizations responsible for upholding the new laws.
It was a very successful program. Jews became far more integrated into American society, and other minorities also benefited from the same laws. We cannot know what would have happened without this Jewish unity, but chances are the civil rights movement would have been delayed.
But we cannot discount the psychological effect on American Jews that Israel had. For the first time, they had something to be proud of - a nation founded on the same ideals as America itself. we cannot measure it, but Jewish pride in Israel helped non-Jews have more respect for Jews as well.
Without Israel, without that pride, without that Jewish unity, there would have been nothing to counter the trend of an America that was increasingly antipathetical to Jews.
Today's antisemites spend a great deal of time trying to divide American Jewry and to denigrate Zionism.. They know that a unified Jewish community is powerful while a divided one is ineffective. They know that Jewish pride is their enemy, so they try to destroy it or minimize it.
The story of American Jews in the 1940s shows what a united Jewish community can do. The story of modern antisemitism shows that this is exactly the haters are trying to undo.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Al Jazeera broadcast a six minute video of an Islamic Jihad military training exercise that was performed right by the border fence with Israel on October 4.
It looks like it was a dry run for the attack to happen only three days later.
The network reported "The Al-Quds Brigades explained, in a statement via Telegram, that the offensive maneuver simulates 'realistic details of the field and raids on Zionist military sites and fortifications with a high intensity of fire, controlling them and avoiding losses among its fighters.'
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Israel is more united, its citizens are more determined to fight for their state, and Jews around the world have renewed their commitment to the Zionist cause. That's my conclusion after a week in Israel.
Israeli military experts, including critics of the government, think the war is going reasonably well. Casualties are significant, and there is hard slogging ahead, but Israel is on course to inflict defeat on the deranged and misguided Hamas movement. Arab leaders appreciate as never before the value of a strong Israel to their own security and prosperity. Iran and its proxies have a vote in what happens next. But for now, Israel has rallied from the shock of Oct. 7 and is on track to re-establish deterrence.
In perhaps the greatest instance of Jew-haters shooting themselves in the foot, in the aftermath of Israel's War of Independence, Middle Eastern mobs and governments forced 850,000 Jews to flee to Israel. Those immigrants and their descendants feel no guilt for Palestinian dispossession and are skeptical of Arab intentions. They are a plurality of Israeli Jews today, and without them Israel could never have grown into the powerful state it is.
For Israel, bad Palestinian strategy is the gift that keeps on giving. Over the decades, the constant threat of Palestinian resistance movements led Israelis to develop the first-class defense and technology capabilities that make it an indispensable partner for countries all over the world.
The unspeakable barbarity of the Hamas attacks has again united and strengthened Israel while accomplishing nothing for the Palestinian people. The Jew-haters who overshadowed more peaceful and responsible demonstrators across U.S. streets and campuses have deeply damaged the Palestinian cause with centrist opinion. Such displays remind Americans that anti-Jewish bigotry and the ignorance it fosters threaten the foundations of American life.
One of the double standards to which Israel is routinely subjected is that it is forced to defend its right to exist, not merely its existence. As part of this insult, Israel’s story is confiscated from it. Israel is not Israel; in times of peace it is apartheid South Africa and in times of war it is the German state under the direction of the Nazis.
Israel is currently at war, so the latter canard is having its time in the sun. One reason that Western writers and journalists and academics falsely accuse Israel of Nazi tactics is that doing so represents the ultimate universalizing of the Holocaust. People who don’t like Israel believe that Israel only exists because of the Holocaust; therefore, if the Holocaust didn’t really “exist” in the way we are made to understand it, Israel is null and void.
The campaign to universalize Jewish suffering is relentless, and it is made stronger by the fact that Holocaust museums and education centers tend to enable this behavior out of a misguided belief that their moral authority depends on their relevance. That relevance is guaranteed by the presence of a Holocaust happening somewhere. And if that Holocaust-like event is happening to the Jews, well that’s superfluous to the mission, isn’t it? This helps explain the current silence of Holocaust museums and education centers in the wake of the brutal Hamas assault that has as its nearest historical parallel the Nazi atrocities.
What happens when a network of Holocaust centers bucks the trend and actually insists on getting the story right? That is the fascinating case of Germany, which is coming under fire for not universalizing Jewish suffering.
In the New Yorker, Masha Gessen rejects Berlin’s culture of Holocaust memorializing. At first, Gessen says, “It was exhilarating to watch memory culture take shape. Here was a country, or at least a city, that was doing what most cultures cannot: looking at its own crimes, its own worst self. But, at some point, the effort began to feel static, glassed in, as though it were an effort not only to remember history but also to insure that only this particular history is remembered—and only in this way.”
Berlin prosecutors said Monday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments on the Holocaust during a visit last year amounted to inciting racial hatred, but they won’t pursue a criminal case due to his diplomatic immunity — even though Germany does not recognize the Palestinian Authority as a state.
Police in Berlin launched a probe “on suspicion of inciting hatred” in August 2022 on the basis of two complaints accusing Abbas of “relativizing the Holocaust” during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The Berlin prosecutor’s office said in a statement it had reached the conclusion that “Abbas had committed the crime of inciting racial hatred” but enjoyed “immunity so that there is an obstacle to him being tried.”
At the press conference with Scholz last year, Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians since 1947.
Scholz did not immediately challenge Abbas on his comments but, following widespread criticism, tweeted the next day that he was “disgusted by the outrageous remarks” made by the Palestinian leader.
My mother, Liz Moynihan, passed away Nov. 7 in Manhattan, aged 94.
Fittingly, it was Election Day — Liz was campaign manager for her husband Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s four New York Senate campaigns, winning landslide victories on shoestring budgets.
After her husband’s death in 2003, Liz settled in New York City, where she championed the completion of Moynihan Train Hall and our city’s museums, performing arts and higher education.
When Moynihan served as US ambassador to the United Nations, Liz was seated in the visitor’s gallery during the Nov. 10, 1975, passage of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution.
“A great evil has been loosed upon the world,” Moynihan declared after he strode to the lectern.
“The abomination of antisemitism,” he continued, “has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty — and more — to the murderers of the 6 million European Jews.”
And he warned: “The terrible lie told here today will have terrible consequences.”
Moynihan was prophetic indeed: 48 years hence, New York synagogues and delis are smeared with Nazi slogans, Hanukkah celebrations are canceled, Jewish citizens are beaten and threatened daily.
Before her death, Liz watched these events in horror; she had many friends in Israel and deep ties to New York’s Jewish community.
She was especially shocked and repulsed by teachers and students at our once-prestigious universities hoisting signs that read “Gas the Jews,” “Hitler Was Right” and “Zionism Is Racism.”
This pernicious antisemitism is deeply entrenched in our taxpayer-funded state universities.
It turns out that Arabs, and the global Left, have been accusing Israel of "genocide" for nearly as long as the term has existed. The accusations from then are just as absurd as they are today.
The earliest I could find was a Jordanian reaction to the 1956 war, accusing Israel of inflicting "genocide" on Egypt.
The Soviet Union accused Israel of "genocide" for winning the Six Day War.
Yasir Arafat couldn't do any less. This is from 1968:
The irony, of course, is that very threat to attack Israeli civilians indeed would be a standard case of genocide under international law, since Fatah at the time was quite clear in its desire of "uprooting the Zionist existence."
In 1977, Moscow again accused Israel of "genocide" - because it was building houses in Judea and Samaria.
In 1982, Christians in Lebanon slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian Muslims. So, naturally, tthe Jewish state was accused of "genocide" (and a "holocaust," to boot.)
From the start, the slander was meant to tar Israel with the worst crime possible, the crime named after the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews. It was always a purely antisemitic slur, and it remains so today.
But notice how much the leftists of today are parroting the language used by the Soviet Union. Every baeless accusation against Israel - "apartheid" and "genocide" and "illegal occupation" - originated with the Soviet Union.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Oct. 7 was the people of Israel's Pearl Harbor day. They must continue to fight back until the existential threat from Hamas no longer exists. They must eliminate this terrorist organization. Period.
Israelis have every right to do as President Roosevelt said after Dec. 7, 1941, and defend themselves to "the uttermost" and "make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."
The U.S. was never involved in a ceasefire after the attacks. Our military did not stop until the total defeat of our collective enemies was realized. Israel should now do the same.
Those who believe that the innocent people of Israel had it coming are fundamentally wrong.
The evil thugs of Hamas are coldblooded killers who violated every sense of decency with their actions.
We must never appease evildoers. There can be no stopping until this evil is eradicated from the earth. Hamas has no place in the civilized world.
Occupation
There is no precise definition of “occupation” under IHL, and thus no way to definitively state whether an occupation has begun or ended. However, no reasonable definition would apply to Israel’s relationship with Gaza.
Israel forcibly removed its citizens and withdrew all military personnel from Gaza in 2005. The designated genocidal terrorist organisation Hamas has ruled over Gaza since 2007 after violently wresting control of it from the Palestinian Authority, after which Israel rightfully declared it “hostile territory”. The idea that nearly 20 years later, Israel is still occupying Gaza is, on its face, nonsense.
To make the argument that Gaza is still occupied by Israel, the UN abuses the vague concept of “effective control” – an undefined notion not found in treaty law but still used as the basis for defining “occupation” – warping it beyond any legal or factual basis.
Those who baselessly argue, based on blatant misrepresentation of the concept, that Israel has “effective control” of Gaza for the purposes of IHL would have to explain how the actual governing authority of Gaza, Hamas, managed to plan and launch a full-scale invasion involving thousands of combatants and a massive bombardment of Israel from that territory without Israel’s knowledge. Whatever control Israel is alleged to have, it clearly is not “effective” by any possible legal definition of the term.
A moot point
IHL has evolved since the 19th century not to create reality, but to manage it. The reality is that there are just wars, and that these wars require rules to protect civilians to the greatest extent possible. The “inherent right” codified under Article 51 is a long-standing principle of self-preservation without caveats beyond other IHL rules under customary international law. To remain fit for purpose, IHL and the interpretation of Article 51 would by definition have to cover any “armed attack”, including terrorism, regardless of its source. Otherwise, as noted by Sir Greenwood above, it would and should be considered mad. No relevant version of international law would allow terrorist groups to attack states while prohibiting those states from defending themselves.
Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, ending the occupation and rendering the already questionable 2004 Advisory Opinion irrelevant to the current situation. Even Hamas admits Gaza is no longer occupied.
Even more importantly, In 2015, the non-existent “state of Palestine” – which includes Gaza – was farcically allowed by the UN to ratify the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements. It thus became a state-like entity under IHL, which renders this entire argument moot.
That so many people who cared nothing about the slaughter of Jews by Hamas two months ago, and ignored the widely distributed photo and video evidence (largely compiled by the terrorists themselves on GoPro cameras to publicize the humiliation of their victims) of those crimes, remains deeply shocking to Jews. So, too, is the hypocrisy of feminist leaders and organizations that seemed uninterested in the Palestinians’ deliberate use of rape—against women, children, and, as new reports come out, even men—as a weapon of war.
These crimes against Jews were ignored or quickly forgotten in the rush to deprive Israel of the right to defend itself. It soon became clear even to many Jews who had always been critical of Israeli policies or who sympathized with the suffering of Palestinians that the protests showed that something deeply troubling was behind the outrage about the fighting in Gaza.
Those chanting for a “free Palestine” from “the river to the sea” weren’t advocating for peace or a two-state solution. Their position was that Israeli suffering was unimportant because the Jewish state had no right to exist and should be “decolonized.” If that meant more Oct. 7-style atrocities, then so much the worse for Jews, who were supposedly guilty of possessing “white privilege” and oppressing “people of color.” The fact that this conflict has nothing to do with race—and that the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and that the majority are “people of color” who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East and North Africa—counts for little among those who buy into intersectional myths and think the Jewish state should be erased and its people subjected to genocide.
Jews are no longer‘dhimmi’
But the pictures of Palestinian prisoners do touch a nerve throughout the world, and the reason for that goes far to explain why Palestinian Arabs—with the support of much of the Islamic world—persist in their century-old war against Zionism.
It is hardly surprising that images of Jewish suffering do not move the not-insubstantial percentage of the world’s population that thinks the Jews are not entitled to sovereignty or the right of self-defense in their ancient homeland. But what they really can’t stand is the idea that Jews are no longer homeless or at the mercy of a hostile world, as they were before the establishment of modern-day Israel in 1948. The notion that a despised minority, against whom the virus of antisemitism continues to incite unthinking hatred and demonization, are now powerful enough to defeat their foes is difficult for them to swallow.
This goes beyond sympathy for the Palestinians. They are trapped in an irredentist mindset that not only prevents them from accepting the multiple offers of statehood and peace Israel has made over the years but causes them to see a refusal to accept the Jewish state’s legitimacy and permanence as inextricably linked with their national identity.
The photos of Hamas prisoners are, by the standards of war photography, nothing particularly unusual or outrageous, and certainly not evidence of abuse. The documentation of their detention is certainly preferable to the silence that Hamas continues to adhere to about the fate of the hostages they have not yet released of whom no proof of life in any form has been forthcoming.
Yet the photos do seem outrageous to those who, whether Muslims or not, see Jews as what the Islamic world traditionally referred to as dhimmi. In Islamic societies, the dhimmi were “protected” residents of a country but treated as inferior to Muslims. Indeed, the photos provoke anger because they show that Hamas, which rightly anticipated that their atrocities would spark a surge in antisemitism rather than a backlash against them, is losing the war they started against the Jews. Their humiliation is evidence that their understanding of the world has been turned upside-down with the Jews no longer relegated to the status of a despised and powerless minority.
The anger about the images of Palestinian prisoners is not a reaction to evidence of Israeli crimes. Instead, it is more proof that the anti-Israel protests that have proliferated in the United States and elsewhere are motivated largely by antisemitic motives, whether rooted in modern leftist theories or historic religious hatred. Rather than a sidebar to the debate about the war, the anger about the photos shows us just how deep intolerance for Israel and Jews runs.
While I agree that the US is an exceptionally safe place for Jews, all indications are that things are getting worse, rapidly. And Levitz seems to be more interested in promoting his own political agenda than to discuss the real problems.
His first argument is flat-out wrong:
There are 7.3 million Jews in America. Only an infinitesimal fraction of American Jews suffer acts of prejudicial violence, vandalism, or harassment in a given year.
He's comparing the number of antisemitic hate crimes the FBI counts every year against Jews, and decides that it is minuscule next to the number of Jews in America.
But most antisemitism does not reach the level of criminal. The ADL survey of 2020 showed that a majority of US Jews experienced or witnessed antisemitism, 25% were personally targeted, and nearly one in ten had been victims of antisemitic assault!
Sweeping that under the rug is not analysis. It is propaganda. The number of crimes is an indication, not the sum total, of antisemitism.
And this survey was in 2020. Imagine what these responses would be today!
Levitz relishes going after antisemitism on the Right, and asserts that most philosemitism on the Right is really hidden antisemitism. But he simply pretends that there is none on the Left, by flatly saying that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, when in fact it is just a masquerade for antisemitism. Yes, even when the anti-Zionism is from Neturei Karta, or socialists who are opposed to all nationalism but seem to spend all their time on Jewish nationalism, or Arabs who were antisemitic before Zionism existed.
Levitz is equally wrong when he says "calling for the establishment of a binational, secular democracy “from the river to the sea” is not anti-Jewish." Such a call was not anti-Jewish in 1935 but when there is already a Jewish state, calling for it to be dismantled and replaced with one where Jews would be a minority, where they will not have a Law of Return - which is the entire point - is indeed anti-Jewish.
He then tries to disprove the "horseshoe" theory that the far-Left as as antisemitic as the far-Right, based on a 2022 survey that had severe methodological flaws.
Levitz further says that "the existence of antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement tells us nothing about the merits of the Palestinian cause." This is true in theory. But if antisemitism is baked into Palestinian nationalism from the start, then the story is a bit different. And not only were the Arabs in Palestine antisemitic long before modern Zionism, and not only was the first Palestinian nationalist leader the Mufti of Jerusalem an unrepentant Jew-hater, but some 97% of Palestinians today hold classic antisemitic attitudes according to the ADL global survey of antisemitism. Separating the two is willful deception.
Later, Levitz states as fact that Israel is guilty of apartheid, which is also an antisemitic argument - besides that fact that it is false, but the entire charge was created in order to demonize Israel with the worst possible charge of racism. The lie preceded the ridiculous footnotes and bogus arguments from Amnesty and HRW. So, yes, that is antisemitism too, and minimizing it is to deny the reality of what modern antisemitism looks like.
Sure, Levitz admits there is some antisemitism, and it is bad. But the thrust of the article is to downplay it while demonizing Israel himself. Which, in the end, justifies it.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Elder of Ziyon
