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! |
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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! |
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Rafah smuggling tunnel, 2010 |
A reliable source revealed to the Palestine Press News Agency, “The outlaw Hamas movement is digging tunnels under the densely populated western camp, specifically in the Qatatuta camp area in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.”The source said, "Hamas militias are digging these tunnels that lead to the UNRWA school in the camp as part of their plan to store heavy weapons (Dushka machine guns and missiles) in tunnels under the students' schools."The source added, "While Hamas militias were digging a tunnel in the area, they broke one of the main water pipes in the camp, which led to water leaking onto the neighboring residents, which sparked the residents' anger at these foolish actions."
Firstly, Yunus Al-Astal has at least three tunnels around his house on the eastern line. Secondly, Fawad Abu Marouf has two tunnels, one of which is Mariout in the Halima Mosque near his house, and there is another tunnel that leads to Ibn Ummah’s house east of Khan Yunis’ license. Amjad Abu Al-Tajja has a tunnel that leads in only three directions. Al-Muttaqeen Mosque in Al-Bahr Street has a large weapons storehouse supervised by Mounir Abu Hatab, an explosives storehouse in Omar Al-Najjar’s house in the Rantissi area, a lathe, a weapons storehouse, and four tunnels near Al-Salam Hospital on the eastern line road.
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! |
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It was hearing one of my comrades praying as we crossed the border into Gaza in October 2023 that brought home what we were about to do. Just a few hours earlier, I had been in Tel Aviv with my girlfriend, when I was sent a codeword on my phone which meant we were going to be moving in and I needed to be back with my unit which had been sitting on the southern border for three weeks.Israeli ‘public relations’ will not solve the problem of the world’s moral bankruptcy
In some ways, the waiting was harder than anything else. It was frustrating, because apart from getting acquainted with the newest technology, there wasn’t much we could do. On the one hand, we weren’t in danger, which was great, but on the other, we were still reeling from the events of Oct 7 and we were poisoned with anger about the massacre of our civilians.
We wanted to go and get the hostages back and we knew we needed to fight for Israel. But we also knew that some of us may not come back.
Even on that first night, as we rolled through the border at 3am with the words of our commanding officer telling us that this was the war of our generation ringing in our ears, we saw coming in the opposite direction a wounded soldier leaving Gaza and it was chilling.
It is a shock, surreal, to actually get there. Everything seemed like a mess. I’d been told to head to a particular building but the stairs had caved in so I then had to get to another building not knowing what would be in it.
The whole time you are moving there are these crazy explosions going off, noises of gunfire, bombs. You hear more than you see in Gaza – it takes a while to get used to the intense noise.
My job is reconnaissance – I am the eyes and the ears of my unit, watching out for danger. It is a huge responsibility and I felt it keenly as my girlfriend’s cousin was among those I was tasked with keeping safe. The sun was going down at 4.45pm and then you can’t see anything apart through night vision goggles.
I hated seeing the scale of the destruction in Gaza. People have been killed and displaced on both sides and I know that Gazans are suffering too. I am not a war-mongering person and I found it quite tough knowing the human impact of what we were doing even if I knew why I was there; our war is not with the Palestinian people but with Hamas.
Going into Gaza we also saw the scale of what we were fighting. I would say that 75 per cent if not more of the homes we went into had some sort of affiliation with Hamas. Lots of weapons; we’d find RPGs and grenades on the floor. You’d go into a pink bedroom and think about the young girl who lived there and hope she was safe, feeling terrible, and then go next door and see guns or detailed maps of Israel showing the kind of thing that was happening in that house. Knowing that that stuff was there because they wanted to kill us.
No amount of “public relations” could “explain” anything to a judicial body that is supposed to be impartial but consists of justices who lack the moral clarity to separate good from evil. Israel may have to honor the decisions of the ICJ, but that does not mean those decisions should be respected.Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent
It is ironic that a country that was recently obsessed with issues related to the need for an independent judiciary has become the subject of a supposedly “independent” panel that issued an interim order described as a “blood libel” by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. In a ridiculous move, the ICJ accused Herzog, a consensus figure in Israel known for his moderation and mild-mannered personality, of engaging in “incitement” by using language that any rational person would consider appropriate after the type of attack perpetrated by Hamas.
We are dealing here with a distorted value system, not a lack of information. It is senseless to believe that, after experiencing the atrocities of Hamas, Israel would have to “explain” anything. It is futile to continue trying to convince people with debased moral standards that beheading, rape, kidnapping and random murder are wrong. Of course, the ICJ judges would say that those actions are terrible, but they fail to act on that belief, creating a reality in which the victim and not the oppressor is in the dock.
The ICJ farce may not mark the death of hasbara, but it proved that it is on life support. Morality is not something that can be sold like a hamburger at McDonalds. It is something that comes from one’s culture, social experiences and ability to show fortitude in the face of corrupt pressure.
Rather than investing energy and resources into convincing others, we would be better served by continuing our fight to be a “light unto the nations” and doing what is right. As for those who see Hamas as an entity deserving of protection, let their moral failings serve as a model for evil.
To anyone with a good heart and a logical mind, this is something that does not need to be explained.
Watching American Justice Joan Donoghue read the decision of the International Court of Justice, live at 2 p.m. Israel time on Friday afternoon, was surreal.Israel to Pursue Genocide Case Against Iran’s Regime with ICJ
Everything about this legal proceeding is grotesque and represents a perversion of ethics and law that is beyond difficult to process. South Africa, a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — as is Israel — brought this application to the court with the support of some rather nefarious international actors. There has been a significant uptick in activity and contact between South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran of late, either a coincidence or reflecting an enhanced alignment of values between the two countries. Iran, of course, is the head of the proverbial Islamist snake, openly fomenting antisemitism globally and responsible for significant acts of violence targeting Jewish civilians.
The moral inversion of all pertinent circumstances giving rise to the Israeli military action in Gaza was of secondary importance in the ICJ hearing, presided over by Justice Donoghue, the court’s chair, and with an unprecedented panel of 17 judges.
Hamas invaded Israel on Saturday Oct. 7, shortly after 6 a.m. on a quiet holiday. The stated intent of Hamas, before, during and after the well-documented savagery unleashed on that day and into the following night, was, is and remains to obliterate the state of Israel and annihilate every Jewish person living in its borders. Hamas’ hatred of Israel and Jews is so primal that any person it encountered on this particular mission was marked for murder. If the odd non-Jew got in their way they were not spared, either. It seems that the crime of merely consorting with Jews is enough to justify murder, to Hamas.
Hamas leaders and supporters worldwide have gloated over the suffering inflicted and stated their unequivocal aspiration to repeat the genocide of Oct. 7, repeatedly. All Jews, ultimately, must be murdered, according to Hamas doctrine. This will facilitate the liberation of Jerusalem and establishment of a global caliphate.
Hamas is also closely allied with and supported by Iran, which boldly proclaims its genocidal intentions with respect to Israel, constantly. Its regional proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, bolster its position and claims.
That the victim of true genocidal conduct and policy — Israel — should be put in the dock at the ICJ and charged with perpetrating the crime perpetrated against it by Hamas, is more macabre, almost, than the events of Oct. 7 themselves.
On Monday, an Israeli cabinet minister announced plans to begin efforts to bring charges of genocide against the Islamic Republic of Iran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).South Africa's Case at the ICJ Is Built on Reports from Groups with Links to Terrorist Organizations
Gideon Moshe Sa’ar, an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Justice between 2021 and 2022, highlighted that the leadership of the regime in Tehran has openly called for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, providing immense support to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist proxies in the Middle East region that were responsible for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
“Iranian leaders have been making genocidal statements for years, with impunity,” said Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law at George Mason University and Director of Scalia Law School’s Center for the Middle East and International Law to The Foreign Desk.
“There are public statements by senior Iranian officials in favor of destroying Israel,” Sa’ar told the Kan public broadcaster. “Iran finances, arms, and trains all the jihadi terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which carried out Oct. 7, so in my opinion, there is an abundance of evidence which can be submitted to the court in the Hague,” he added.
Knesset member Sa’ar noted that the Jewish state is a small and persecuted nation that is fighting for its life while “fighting on the international stage for its right to self-defense.”
“It is a nation that is truly at risk of genocide given that there are enemies around it that declaredly want to destroy it,” Sa’ar told Kan.
“The State of Israel, a liberal democracy fighting against the most heinous act of mass terror perpetrated against the Jewish state, should never have been in the dock of the accused at The Hague in the first place,” said Arsen Ostrovsky, human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based NGO International Legal Forum, a global network of pro-Israel lawyers combating antisemitism and terror, who was also present in The Hague, for the hearings against Israel.
“If anyone ought to have been on trial at the ICJ, it was Hamas and their genocidal sponsors, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which remain open about their intentions of annihilating the Jewish state and supporting Hamas,” he said to The Foreign Desk.
For years, a network of Western-funded NGOs involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been engaged in a concerted and coordinated effort to attach the "apartheid" charge to Israel.
South Africa's submission to the International Court of Justice contains 45 references to NGO publications, including several from outfits linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization.
Staff and board members of these PFLP-linked groups helped prepare South Africa's case.
The ICJ should be ashamed that it is accepting evidence from blatant propaganda groups that have proven track records of supporting hate and violence against Israel and Jews.
The Israel Defense Forces has recently changed its orders to soldiers in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip and its special units have begun fighting inside the city's tunnels and engaging Hamas fighters in close combat.The reason for the change stems from the army's perception that creating contact with Hamas in the tunnels will lead to significant information about the location of the hostages and senior Hamas figures residing inside them. Intelligence officials believe that the hostages and the Hamas leaders are still in the tunnels in the area, and are moving from place to place based on the army's progress.
When the fighting started in Gaza, soldiers were ordered not to enter the tunnels because army brass believed that Hamas was trying to draw the forces in to attack them. In practice, it seems that Hamas didn't really believe that the army would try to look for its leaders. In most tunnels, only the shafts were booby-trapped, and so far the tunnels themselves have not been booby-trapped in a way that threatens the soldiers. Commanders have said that they were surprised by the scope of the tunnels and the shafts dug throughout Gaza. They added that they think that Hamas was surprised that the army was also fighting underground.
The IDF is the first army to deal with underground fighting of such proportions and are learning on the fly. Battles underground are difficult and complicated, with fighting conducted in complete darkness and knowledge that hostages could be there as well. The army recognizes that aerial attacks are insufficient to reach Hamas leaders because most of the tunnels they are in are too deep.
In cooperation between units in the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, various tools were developed to channel large volumes of water into Hamas’ terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip. This is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network of tunnels.These capabilities consist of installing pumps and pipes, the materialization of engineering developments, and the ability to locate tunnel shafts suitable for the deployment of these tools. The capability was developed in a professional capacity, including analysis of the soil characteristics and the water systems in the area to ensure that damage is not done to the area's groundwater. The pumping of water was only carried out in tunnel routes and locations that were suitable, matching the method of operation to each case.This project was developed following combat procedures, accelerated force-building efforts, and while training forces with technological expertise.
While I'm sure these plans existed for a while, actual testing, fixing unforeseen engineering problems and implementation couldn't be done except while under fire in an actual war zone. Again, this is impressive.
As long as Israel is fighting, it will continue to get better and better, both at attacking Hamas and at minimizing civilian deaths that Hamas tries to maximize. Hamas does not have any new tricks up its sleeve: the tunnels were its guarantee, and they bet their organization on the IDF not being able to fight in the tunnels themselves and not being able to neutralize more than a small percentage of them. But the IDF is gaining more knowledge, more experience and more intelligence every day, and it applying this information extraordinarily quickly.
Which means that time is on Israel's side. It needs to make clear to the world that it will not stop fighting until the war's goals are met, but also that it is not only progressing but accelerating in achieving them.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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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! |
|
Israel says it has documented deepening ties between Unrwa and Hamas since the militant group cemented its hold on Gaza in 2007. Unrwa has admitted to finding Hamas weapons stored in schools and Israel has repeatedly said Hamas tunnels run under and through Unrwa buildings as well as other civilian facilities. The former head of Unrwa’s union in Gaza was fired in 2017 after Israel found out he had been elected to Hamas’ top political leadership.Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel
The dossier is the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the Unrwa employees and militants. It offers telling details regarding the events of Oct. 7. A math teacher belonging to Hamas was close enough to a female hostage in Gaza that he took a picture of her. Another teacher was carrying an antitank missile the night before the invasion.
One Unrwa employee set up an operations room for Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Oct. 8, the day after the attack. Three other employees, including another Arabic teacher at an Unrwa school, received a text from Hamas to arm themselves at a staging area close to the border the night before the attack. It was unclear whether they went.
A different elementary school teacher did cross into Israel and went to Reim, a district where a kibbutz, an army base and a music festival were attacked.
One of the intelligence reports seen by the Journal said a 13th Unrwa employee, who didn’t have a discernible affiliation with a terror group, also entered Israel. Hundreds of Gazan civilians flooded across the border as part of the Hamas-led attack, Israel says.
Teachers make up nearly three-quarters of Unrwa’s Gaza-based local staff. Unrwa schools, which use textbooks approved by the Palestinian Authority, have come under fire for using materials that allegedly glorify terrorists and promote hatred of Israel. Unrwa says it has taken steps to address problematic content, but a 2019 U.S. Government Accountability Office report said that measures haven’t always been implemented.
Unlike every other refugee population, the Palestinian Arabs were not resettled. They were kept in camps throughout the Middle East with the largest concentration in Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt from 1949 to 1967. They were prevented from finding new homes in Arab and Muslim countries, where they spoke the language and shared a common culture. Nor were they enabled to go elsewhere to make new lives.Brendan O'Neill: UNRWA is worse than you think
Instead, they were kept in place to wait for the day when they could “go home” to their former villages in what was now Israel. Their leaders and the rest of the Arab world opposed their resettlement, doing all they could to prevent it.
And the agency that enabled this policy to continue for generations was none other than UNRWA.
It’s important to understand that at the time when all these refugee problems arose, the United Nations created two refugee agencies. One, UNRWA, deals only with the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (or UNHCR) has the responsibility for all of the other refugees in the world.
The UNHCR has its flaws, but its job is to help the refugees by giving them not just immediate aid in surviving being displaced by wars and other disasters but also assistance in resettling in places where it will be safe for them. Their goal is to ensure that their problems are resolved and that their children will make new lives rather than continue to live in camps.
By contrast, the UNRWA exists solely to ensure that Palestinian refugees are never resettled. That’s why almost all of the people who are called Palestinian refugees are the descendants of the people who fled the war the Arab world started in 1948. Several generations have been born in the camps but, contrary to the way other populations are treated, all are given the same status as those who were the original 1948 refugees.
Of all the tens of millions of refugees of the 1940s, the only ones whose descendants have not been resettled are the Palestinians. A humane and rational policy would have led to their being absorbed into other populations. But that’s not UNRWA’s job. It operates the ultimate welfare state in which generations are kept dependent on charity. Worse than that, its programs and policies all encourage the Palestinians to go on believing that someday Israel will cease to exist, and then they can return to where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived three-quarters of a century ago. Though it pretends to be a humanitarian force, it encourages its charges to look forward to the day when Hamas’s genocidal objective—the mass murder of Israel’s 7 million Jews—will be achieved.
Therefore, it’s little surprise that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and that among its staff are people who take part in terrorist atrocities. And that much of the aid it receives from the world goes to help Hamas continue to function. UNRWA allows the very people its donors think they are helping to be used as human shields in a cynical hopeless war.
So, let’s not waste much time arguing about the details of UNRWA’s complicity in Oct. 7 or other acts of terror. The only discussion that needs to be held is one about its abolition and replacement by a genuine refugee agency. The world needs one that can give Palestinians new homes rather than keep them in misery awaiting another Holocaust for the Jews that they’ve been led to believe will magically solve their problems.
Most striking is the left’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the charges against UNRWA. These people pose as ‘anti-fascists’ yet they seem alarmingly blasé about the possibility that a UN agency employed people of such an intense fascistic persuasion that they were happy to take part in an orgy of anti-Jewish murder. It’s ‘10 or 12 individuals’ from a ‘workforce of 13,000’, said LBC’s James O’Brien. This is a man who said the right-wing media’s defence of Boris Johnson during Partygate was proof that Britain is moving in a ‘fascistic direction’. It seems a handful of pro-Boris thinkpieces is fascism, but ‘10 or 12’ UN employees allegedly kidnapping and murdering Jews is not something we should overreact to.
The Guardian’s Owen Jones dismissively says these are ‘allegations against 0.04 per cent of [UNRWA’s] staff’. Is there an acceptable number of alleged Jew-killers for a UN agency to employ? If 12 isn’t a particularly big deal, how about 50? Or 100? A hundred alleged pogromists would still only be 0.77 per cent of UNRWA’s workforce – is that cool?
Mehdi Hasan speaks of ‘the alleged acts of a handful of UNRWA employees’ and slams the ‘demonisation campaign’ against UNRWA. This is the same Mehdi Hasan who once said Donald Trump’s description of lefties as ‘vermin’ was ‘right out of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda playbook’ and that Trump should ‘terrify’ us all. If a privileged member of America’s media elites can feel ‘terrified’ of Trump’s bluster, surely Jews can feel terrified of Jew-killers, even if it is ‘just’ 12. To a Jew, a ‘handful’ of murderous anti-Semites is still a terrible thing.
The speed with which the woke left went from handwringing over racists to saying, ‘Well, it’s only 12 racists’, has been mind-blowing. These are the kind of people who denounce gender-critical feminists as ‘fascist-adjacent’ if some alt-right arsehole attends one of their demos. Who will damn the entire Tory party as irretrievably Islamophobic if one of its lowly local councillors makes a joke about Muslims. Who insisted that Wayne Couzens – the London police officer who murdered Sarah Everard – was not a ‘bad apple’ but rather was symptomatic of the entire sexist, murderous rot of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Sarah Everard’s killer isn’t one bad apple – the whole police force is rotten’, cried Novara Media in 2021 – a mag whose fanboys are no doubt all over social media saying the 12 alleged Jew-killers in UNRWA were just bad apples. Funny that.
When a British cop was unveiled as a misogynistic murderer, the left cried ‘Defund the police!’. Yet when 12 employees of UNRWA were accused of taking part in a carnival of racist rape and murder they said the opposite: fund UNRWA; give it more money. In response to Britain and other nations’ suspension of donations to UNRWA, the activist class took to X to drum up support for UNRWA. They seem blissfully unaware of how horrendous, how sick, these optics are. It boils down to this: within hours of Israel saying, ‘We believe UNRWA staff participated in the mass murder of Jews’, leftists were on social media saying, ‘Give money to UNRWA’. In all my years observing the left’s abandonment of reason and Enlightenment, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as appalling as that.
Most importantly, they’re just wrong to push the ‘bad apples’ argument about UNRWA. To haughtily tweet about the tiny percentage of UNRWA staff who are alleged to have bloodied their hands on 7 October. To go around saying ‘10 or 12’ possible pogromists does not a wicked organisation make. For the truth is that UNRWA has long been morally and politically compromised. The Wall Street Journal reports on intelligence dossiers that suggest up to 10 per cent of UNRWA’s employees have links with ‘Islamist militant groups’. A study of a Telegram channel made up of 3,000 UNRWA-employed schoolteachers found thousands of messages praising Hamas’s pogrom and expressing hatred for Jews. Analysts have found that some UNRWA-run schools ‘glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonise Israelis and incite anti-Semitism’. The truth about UNRWA, as a writer for Haaretz put it, is that it is ‘riddled with Hamas’.
And yet on Saturday, Holocaust Memorial Day, we had the chilling spectacle of the West’s supposed anti-fascists rattling the tin for UNRWA. We witnessed the self-righteous woke classes helping to fundraise for an organisation that is ‘riddled’ with links to a terror outfit that was founded with the express purpose of killing Jews and destroying Israel. The very people who claim to hate racism spent a day when we remember the victims of the worst act of state racism in history drumming up support for a UN agency that is ‘riddled’ with supporters of an avowedly racist terror group. We must be nearing the nadir of woke, surely?
What is the University’s mission? What is the process for evaluating whether the University’s actions are consistent with its mission? Is the intention to have one mission for the entire University, or does each school/college have its own mission? In what way should the mission be incorporated into academics, admissions, and faculty selection?Does the University have proper governance and are the responsibilities of Trustees clearlyunderstood?What is the role of merit/academic excellence in admissions, faculty hiring, and other areas of recruitment? Is merit/academic excellence paramount, or one of many factors?What are the Board’s criteria for qualification and admission for membership in the Faculty?What are the Board’s criteria for the instruction of students and recommendations for degrees in course and in Faculty?Should any of the existing academic departments be closed and/or combined as per Provision 10.6 of the Charter?The Supreme Court recently ruled on affirmative action in college admissions. How does the University intend to comply with the ruling?What is the University policy on free speech, civil discourse, hate speech, outside actors, respect, and tolerance?How important is viewpoint diversity in the hiring of our faculty, our administrators and theremainder of the University community? If it is important, is it compatible with our current DEI framework?While recognizing the complete academic freedom of the faculty and the freedom affordedadministrators as individuals, what is the University’s policy on faculty and administratorspromoting a particular viewpoint in their official capacity? Should a student even be able to tell the political and other leanings of their professors? b. Is academic discipline appropriate in the event if a professor or faculty member abuses their official position?Is the University a neutral body that is a hosting entity for its community members or does it have an institutional opinion?Is the University a U.S. institution with foreign diversity, or a global institution based in the United States?What is the University’s policy on direct and indirect foreign donations from countries/individuals and, specifically, what is the policy on publicly identifying any such contributions? Similarly, what is the University’s policy on direct and indirect foreign donations to student organizations?
Mr. Rowan sent a four-page email to university trustees titled “Moving Forward,” which many professors interpreted as a blueprint for a more conservative campus.Amy C. Offner, a history professor who led the protest, called the document a proposed “hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the university.”
Penn is now being assailed from many sides. It is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Jewish students and partly financed by unnamed donors, and the subject of a congressional investigation with subpoena power. ...Two alumni, Mr. Rowan and Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, were notable among the sponsors of a fund-raiser for the re-election of Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, whose House committee is investigating Penn and other universities over claims of antisemitism.
Mr. Rowan and Mr. Lauder did not attend the fund-raiser, but the event’s organizer — Andrew Sabin, a New Yorker who made a fortune in metal recycling — said that the sponsors shared an opposition to antisemitism and are hoping to pressure Congress to remove federal funding and the tax-exempt status of some universities.A separate investigation by the House Ways and Means Committee has questioned whether campus antisemitism jeopardizes the nonprofit status of Penn as well as Cornell, Harvard, and M.I.T.“We’ve got a very, very aggressive path forward,” said Mr. Sabin, who did not attend Penn.“This is an anti-democratic attack unfolding, not just at Penn, but all across the country, including at public universities in Florida, in Texas, Ohio and beyond,” said Dr. Offner, the president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization.Penn, she said, had become “ground zero of a coordinated national assault on higher education, an assault organized by billionaires, lobbying organizations, and politicians who would like to control what can be studied and taught in the United States.”
The faculty, however, is not of one mind. Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology, responded directly in an email to the faculty senate.“Your letter specifically calls out Marc Rowan’s questions, which I have studied and found to be reasonable and helpful,” wrote Dr. Kahana, who shared his email with The New York Times. Dr. Kahana recently organized a trip to Israeli universities by Penn professors, as a show of solidarity with academic colleagues in Israel.
It should be noted that the outbreak of anti-Semitic acts in France began on October 7, the day of the surprise attack carried out by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP. Thus, on the very day that images of the massacre of Israeli civilians were broadcast, antisemitic acts increased by more than 700% compared to the daily average observed from year to year.This similar reaction had already been observed during the upsurge in antisemitic acts following the attack on the Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012 (an increase of almost 200%) and after the Hypercacher attack in 2015 (increase of almost 300%).In light of these three events, a surprising and worrying phenomenon emerges: the media coverage of the massacre of Jews causes an increase in antisemitic acts.
To "ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel" will require "durable demilitarization, which can only be carried out and sustained by Israel," along with "deradicalization," a cleansing of the ideological poison in Gaza that most Jewish Israelis on both left and right now regard as nonnegotiable preconditions for peace with the Palestinians.Bassem Eid: My Fellow Palestinians: It's Time to Get Rid of Our Leaders and Accept Israel's Offers for Peace
How is the campaign against Hamas going? "Better than many expected. It took the U.S. and its allies nine months to defeat radical forces in Mosul" in 2016-17 against Islamic State. "Mosul is smaller than Gaza and did not have the massive terror underground infrastructure. We're now in the fourth month."
Netanyahu, like most Israelis, is aghast at the way protesters in the West - especially on American campuses - demonize Israel and, in some cases, laud Hamas. "This is a problem not just for Israel but also for America....America is the vanguard of freedom and the guarantor of liberty in this century. If a younger generation emerges in America that supports the head-choppers, it is a problem for civilization."
Asked about Washington's push for a two-state solution while Israel is in the throes of an existential war, he says, "Anyone supporting Israel and who also supports a two-state solution should ask themselves some questions. Do they support the Palestinians having an army? The answer is of course not. Should the Palestinians be able to bring in weapons? The answer is of course not. Should they be able to make military pacts with Iran? Of course not."
"In any future agreement, the Palestinians should have all the power to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel." In any agreement, "Israel must retain overall security control over territory west of the Jordan River, and that includes Gaza."
"Some in the United States believe that the obstacle to peace with the Palestinians is - me. They don't realize that I reflect the view of most Israelis." Polls confirm Netanyahu's assertion and indicate that Israelis, far from clamoring for a two-state solution, are adamant that the war should be fought with intensity.
Most of his compatriots "understand that the problem is that the Palestinians don't want peace with Israel but peace without Israel." It's "not the absence of a Palestinian state but the opposition to a Jewish state that is the obstacle to peace."
When the United Nations General Assembly voted to divide the Mandate into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, the Jewish community joyously accepted their proposal. Yet tragically, the Palestinian Arab leadership again rejected even a small Jewish state in the territory. They then invited the armies of seven neighboring Arab countries to invade and destroy the newborn Jewish state in what became Israel's War of Independence.Bassam Tawil: Time to End UNRWA's Jihad against Israel
The trend continued with the Oslo Accords of 1993, in which Israeli leaders generously allowed a genocidal terrorist group called the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), run by the mastermind mass murderer Yasser Arafat, to take control over most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The year 2000 was a critical juncture. At the Camp David Summit, Israel extended an unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood. They were once again met with Palestinian leadership's refusal—and the eruption of the bloody Second Intifada, a wave of suicide bombings that killed almost a thousand Israeli civilians.
The betrayal shattered any illusion of a commitment to a peaceful resolution from the Palestinian side.
Then came 2008, at the Annapolis Conference, where Israel once again reached out with a proposal for an independent Palestinian state. The refusal of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to accept this offer was not just disappointing; it was infuriating. Today, Abbas, who came to power in 2004, is serving the nineteenth year of his four-year presidential term, having suspended both elections and the constitution in the Palestinian territories.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip is ruled by the vile Hamas, the ISIS of Palestine, which, on October 7, 2023, invaded the communities of Southern Israel, murdering 1,200 souls in a single day of nightmares and taking more than 240 captives to Gaza. Alongside these murders were unspeakable acts of sexual assault and continuous abuses of hostages until today, a grim reminder of the human cost of this conflict.
The sworn objective of Hamas's founding charter is not coexistence but the obliteration of Israel. Khaled Meshaal, former head of Hamas and still one of its most senior leaders, clarified just this month Hamas's position on the idea of a two-state solution: "We reject this notion, because it means you would get a promise for a [Palestinian] state, yet you are required to recognize the legitimacy of the other state, which is the Zionist entity... We will not give up on our right to Palestine in its entirety, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea." He insisted on his belief that Oct. 7 only "enhanced this conviction."
The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regarding a two-state solution reveals a harsh reality: Israel has consistently made genuine efforts toward peace, only to be met with rejection, treachery, and blood-curdling violence by the Palestinian side. This pattern of refusal, particularly epitomized by groups like Hamas, has been the real obstacle to peace.
It's time to acknowledge this truth bluntly. Those who claim to desire peace must confront and challenge the rejectionist elements within Palestinian society, including Hamas. We need to get rid of the Palestinian establishment who have ruled for 15 years without actually representing the Palestinian people. Only then can we hope to forge a path toward a peaceful, two-state future.
"Hamas is involved in everything. Hamas has their hands on UNRWA administration workers. Hamas manages UNRWA. They are those in charge in the agency. From the day Hamas came to power, they took control of everything. The UNRWA employees are from Hamas. The heads of the departments and the senior staff are Hamas members." —Palestinian from the Gaza Strip to an Israeli officer in a recorded call, X (Twitter) December 27, 2023.UNWRA was established to aid Jewish as well as Arab refugees
It is now clear that the UN heads were lying when they said they were unaware of the involvement of their employees with terror groups. In fact, they knew but did their utmost to appease Hamas.
In a moment of rare honesty, in 2021 the UN acknowledged that UNRWA's school curriculum referred to Israel as "the enemy," taught children mathematics by counting "martyred terrorists," and included the phrase "Jihad is one of the doors to paradise" in Arabic grammar lessons.
"Before UNRWA, this terrorist accomplice [Abdallah Mehjez] worked for the BBC..." — Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
"Now is the time for reform. Reform for rehabilitation - so that the minds of Palestinian children can no longer be poisoned. So that there can be a shared vision of peace in this land." — Lt. Col. (res.) Peter Lerner, X (Twitter), January 27, 2024.
Western taxpayers should not be funding terror groups disguised as humanitarian organizations.
UNRWA was established to support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees, not to support the development of terrorism.
Following evidence that it has colluded with Hamas in Gaza, several countries have withdrawn or paused their funding to UNWRA, the UN agency tasked with giving relief to Palestinian Arab refugees* fleeing in 1948 from what would become Israel. But there is little discussion of why an agency set up as a temporary measure should still be giving relief to ‘refugees’ 75 years later. It is not generally known that UNWRA was established with the aim of helping refugees on both sides of the conflict, but no one today talks of Jewish refugees, who have been fully absorbed.
According to Don Peretz (Who is a Refugee?) initially UNRWA defined a refugee “as a needy person who, as a result of the war in Palestine, has lost his home and his means of livelihood.
This definition included some 17,000 Jews who had lived in areas of Palestine taken over by Arab forces during the 1948 war and about 50,000 Arabs living within Israel’s armistice frontiers. Israel took responsibility for these individuals, and by 1950 they were removed from the UNRWA rolls leaving only Palestine Arabs and a few hundred non-Arab Christian Palestinians outside Israel in UNRWA’s refugee category.
At the time there was no internationally recognised definition of what constituted a refugee. In 1951, The UN Refugee Convention agreed the following definition:
“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”
This definition certainly applies to the 850,000 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Arab countries, synagogue burnings, arrests and riots. Returning to these countries would have put – and still does -their lives at risk.
The burden of rehabilitating and resettling the 650,000 Jewish refugees who arrived in Israel from Arab countries was shouldered by the Jewish Agency and US Jewish relief organisations, such as the Joint Distribution Committee. They were shunted into transit camps or ma’abarot. The conditions were appalling.
The American aid earmarked to solve the issue of Middle East refugees was supposed to have been split evenly between Israel and the Arab states, with each side receiving $50 million to build infrastructure to absorb refugees. The money to take in the Arab refugees was handed over to the U.N. agency founded to address the issue of Palestinian refugees, and the Americans gave Arab countries another $53 million for “technical cooperation.” In effect, the Arab side received double the money given to Israel, even though Israel took in more refugees, including ones from Arab nations – Jews who had been displaced by the regional upheavals. The bills presented to Congress in 1951 included a bill to send Israel aid to take in refugees. It was the first and last time that any mechanism was established for the Jewish refugees. The amount Congress allocated to provide for Middle East refugees – Jewish and Arab – at the request of then-President Harry Truman was equal to $1.5 billion today.
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The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
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