Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 04, 2024

09/04 Links Pt2: The Che Guevara of the Tentifada; Debunking Darryl Cooper; Archaeology is a big problem for the Palestinian cause

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Che Guevara of the Tentifada

The moments of clarity keep piling up. The latest one is thanks to the newest progressive hero, Abu Obeida, a senior Hamas official and spokesman for the terror group’s “military wing.”

It would be silly to pretend that anybody could’ve mistaken Obeida for a well-meaning functionary in the past, but he did us the favor this week of making his evil—and thus his admirers’ moral depravity—inarguable.

After Hamas executed six hostages less than a week ago, and their remains were discovered by IDF troops less than a mile from where they had just rescued another hostage, Obeida explained that such horrific crimes were now officially Hamas policy: “Let it be clear to everyone that, following the incident in Nuseirat, new instructions have been issued to the Mujahideen tasked with guarding the prisoners. These instructions outline how to handle the situation if the occupation army approaches the location where the prisoners are being held.”

The “incident in Nuseirat” is the IDF rescue of four hostages in a residential neighborhood in Gaza, including Noa Argamani. If Hamas fears hostages will be rescued, they will execute them in cold blood.

So says Abu Obeida, the Che Guevara of the tentifada.

That characterization is not an exaggeration, either.

At the Northwestern camps, a protester donned a hoodie with what is becoming the iconic picture of Abu Obeida, masked and in military fatigues with a finger in the air, on the front. Ohio State’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine sold oil paintings of the image. The University of Wisconsin-Madison protests featured a banner with Obeida’s picture on it with the words “Glory to the Resistance.”

In case it was unclear why they admired Abu Obeida, the University of California-Santa Cruz encampments featured the written slogans “Death to Israelis” and “Glory to Abu Obeida.”

A Harvard graduate student, at a protest in New York, led the crowd in a chant of: “Strike, strike, Tel Aviv. Abu Obeida, our beloved.” Footage shows him leading chants at tentifada rallies at Columbia and the City University of New York.

Growing signs of antisemitism in the open

The current dehumanization of Jews all over the world and of Israelis of all kinds involves the false narrative that Jews are all white, successful and perpetrators rather than victims. Jews cannot win. Perceived success brings scorn and the internalized versions are heartbreaking.

The Santa Ana, California school district has taken this one step further as they are actually teaching students to be antisemitic! The ethnic studies steering committee noted in its agenda that it needs to address “the Jewish question” and that they would hold meetings on Jewish holidays to avoid Jewish participation.

The curriculum passed as senior committee members stated, “Jews are not a disadvantaged ethnic group in the U.S. because they were never slaves,” and “We only support the oppressed, and Jews are the oppressor.” The sole Jewish member of the committee was described by the leader as a “colonized Jewish mind” and a few other choice words not fit for print.

Earlier this summer I resigned from the board of directors of the UMass Amherst Alumni Association. I am a grateful graduate, but when I asked leadership to discuss antisemitism and to craft a statement for our website or quarterly that I offered to write, the board declined.

I was clear this was not about Israel but simply about hatred against Jews. For Jewish students and alums, it feels important at this moment. The ADL gave UMass Amherst the grade “F” for not combating antisemitism on campus. I offered a simple way to start to turn things around and for Jews to feel as safe as everyone else on campus.

Here’s what I would have written: “The UMass Amherst Alumni Association stands against the hatred of Jews and we support the safety and well-being of Jewish students and alumni.” Period, not but. If otherwise well-meaning organizations cannot do this, we are swimming in normative antisemitism. It’s unconscionable.

Archaeology is a big problem for the Palestinian cause

The stone seal that was just discovered doesn’t have any inscriptions referring to “Palestine.” It doesn’t refer to any indigenous Palestinian holidays, nor does it bear any ancient Palestinian symbols—because none of those things exist.

The writing on the seal is Hebrew, not Arabic. The name written on it is a Jewish name, not an Arab or Muslim name: Yeho’ezer ben Hoshayahu. The black stone seal was found near the Temple Mount’s southern wall,

That name is very similar to the name of one of King David’s warriors mentioned in the Torah. It’s not similar to the name of the warrior of some “Palestinian” king—because there never was such a thing.

It’s also very similar to a Jewish name mentioned in the biblical book of Jeremiah. It’s not similar to any names mentioned in the Quran. As a matter of fact, the city of Jerusalem itself is not mentioned in the Quran either. Isn’t that fascinating? Despite all the platitudes we hear about how Jerusalem is the “city of three ancient faiths,” Jerusalem does not appear a single time in the Quran.

Filip Vukosavovic of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the newly discovered seal, which dates to about 700 BCE, was used by someone who “held a senior position in the Kingdom of Judah’s administration.” Note: Kingdom of Judah, not Kingdom of Palestine.

It was only some 1,400 years after the creation of that seal, in the seventh century CE, that the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula invaded and occupied the Land of Israel. The Muslim occupiers never called the country “Palestine.”

Altogether, the archaeologists of the Temple Mount Sifting Project have uncovered several thousand items related to the biblical period. And not one of those items—not one—refers to “Palestinians.”

No wonder the Islamic religious authorities treat the debris from their renovations as garbage. They know that every scoop of dirt can reveal additional evidence that the rightful owners of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel are the Jews.

The Islamic officials on the Temple Mount would like to hide the past. Fortunately, however, Israel’s archaeologists have come to the rescue—that is, the rescue of Jewish national history. In the course of fulfilling the noble scientific purpose of archaeology, they are reaffirming the deep roots of the Jewish people in the Holy Land.

09/04 Links Pt1: A Letter to My Israeli Neighbors; Israel Complied with UN Resolutions; Peace Never Came; Lammy's lamentable libels

From Ian:

A Letter to My Israeli Neighbors

To my neighbors, to my supposed enemies,

These have been the darkest of days for you. They have been dark for me, too. All I want to do is give you a hug. But I cannot do that.

For one, I am a Palestinian who lives in a small village in the West Bank. The crossings have been closed ever since October 7, so I cannot physically reach you, despite being just a few miles away.

But beyond the practical barriers that exist between us, people like me aren’t supposed to embrace people like you. Where I come from, we are called traitors for doing just that.

I had always been proud to be Palestinian. That changed on October 7. Seeing those images of women, children, and elderly taken as hostages or killed by Hamas, I felt deeply ashamed that such hate could have any home among my people. And I said so. I spoke out publicly on social media—saying that the massacre was unequivocally wrong—and expressing my love for my friends in Israel.

Now, I’m trying to flee the neighborhood I called home for my entire life because the people around me don’t understand how I could hold such a belief. Because being called a traitor means something where I live. It means groups like Hamas will try to kill you.

If I’m a traitor for saying that murdering and kidnapping innocent women, babies, and the elderly is wrong then yes, I am a traitor. If I’m a traitor for weeping alone in my bedroom over the murder of six more innocent souls by terrorists who are on the side of endless death and destruction, then yes, call me a traitor.

Ian Haworth: Joe Biden Blames the Jews for the Crime of Fighting to Live

Netanyahu's duty, as prime minister of Israel, is to return the hostages and ensure peace and security for his own citizens. Biden's duty, as president of the United States, is to do the same for his own citizens, one of whom was just murdered by Hamas. And yet Joe Biden is pushing Hamas propaganda, blaming the Jews for the actions of those who wish to destroy them.

First, let's say that a ceasefire is the most important goal (which, it must be said, it is not). Israel has accepted multiple deals. Meanwhile, Hamas — the terrorists who are busy murdering Israeli hostages — has not.

If one side accepts a deal and the other does not, in what world is the side that accepted the deal to blame for the other's rejection?

But second, and far more importantly, do not miss the deeply antisemitic trick being played by Biden and those who are propping him up.

Hamas set this timeline in motion. Hamas engaged in the deadliest day of violence against Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7. Hamas slaughtered 1,200 innocent Israeli civilians. Hamas raped, tortured, mutilated. Hamas took hostages. Hamas murdered hostages.

But when Jews have the audacity to defend themselves against an ongoing threat — Hamas, after all, has promised to continue their attempted genocide no matter the cost — Jews are to blame, and Hamas is blameless.

Jews are to blame when they are attacked by Hamas, and Hamas is blameless. Jews are to blame when they fight back against Hamas, and Hamas is blameless. Jews are to blame when they agree to ceasefire or hostage agreements that Hamas rejects, and Hamas is blameless.

In a sane world, Hamas would be condemned as the evil barbarians they are, and Israel celebrated for their entirely justified actions in defense of their own sovereignty.

But we do not live in a sane world. For Hamas, who needs friends when you have enemies like Joe Biden, the same sort of naive, clueless and bigoted morons who would have blamed Jews for the spread of disease hundreds of years ago, who today blame Jews for committing the ultimate crime: fighting to live.

Israel Complied with UN Resolutions; Peace Never Came

In 2000, Israel did not foresee Nasrallah transforming his militia from defensive to offensive. Perhaps that was why, in 2005, Israel replicated its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon by conceding Palestinian territories, even without prior agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmud Abbas.

Israel dismantled settlements, pulled out 10,000 Israelis, and withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip entirely and the northern part of the West Bank, around Jenin and Tulkarem.

Withdrawal was expected to boost the popularity of the PA, but its corruption and incompetence cost it the legislative election that Hamas won in 2006. By June 2007, Hamas had violently ejected the PA from Gaza. Palestinians now had two governments.

In the West Bank, under PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the economy grew and security improved. Fayyad’s competence, however, deprived Abbas and his cronies of their public money spoils.

In 2013, Abbas ejected Fayyad, causing a backslide in the economy and security. Hamas started recruiting in Jenin, from where the terrorist group organized attacks — such as shootings, ramming cars, and knifings — against Israelis. The Israeli military was forced to operate in the West Bank, thus compounding Palestinian misery. When Abbas visited Jenin in July 2023, Palestinians chased him away.

Since October 2023, Israel has had to go into most of Gaza and intensified its incursions into the West Bank. Israel has also had to fight against Hezbollah to restore normalcy to its north.

Thirty-one years after Israel started experimenting with coordinated withdrawals with Palestinian leaders, 24 years after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, 19 years after it left Gaza and Jenin, and only one year after Jerusalem signed on to a US-sponsored maritime border demarcation deal with Beirut, none of the deals or unilateral withdrawals brought Israel peace.

For its concessions, Israel got a Hamas massacre of 1,200 of its citizens on October 7, the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Then, on October 8, Israel found itself facing Hezbollah attacks that have depopulated its north.

And despite all of this, UN Secretary-General Guterres believes the end of Palestinian and Lebanese violence against Israel will only result from more Israeli withdrawals, as if three decades of Israeli concessions have not proven the futility of compromising — and that Jews, Israelis, and foreign citizens will die as a result.

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

It was a drear Sunday morning when we heard the news that Hamas had executed six hostages, among them American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Israeli Parents struggled to put on a brave face as they readied their excited children for the first day of school. Teachers had to smile and pretend they were happy as they welcomed students into classrooms all over Israel. For the most part, the rest of us had no need to hide our sadness. Even the sky was sad—it drizzled, an almost unheard of phenomenon at this time of year. I was not the only one who remarked that the heavens were crying for our dead.

On that mournful morning, all of Israel shared the pain. We suffered together all at once, a nation depressed, beset by collective grief. There’s unity in that. But it’s not a good kind of unity. It’s a unity that palpably hurts.

There’s the pain of the loss; the way it happened; and the fact that we were so close to getting them home. Then too, by now we felt we knew them. We knew their faces and names. They were a part of us now, especially Hersh, whose parents had fought so hard for him with their very visible efforts to spread word of the plight of their beautiful son, the boy with the dark curls and impish grin who suffered so hard for 330 days.

We were hurting, and even more, we hurt for the families, knowing that our pain was as nothing compared to what they were now experiencing; pain beyond our imagination. Perhaps that’s why US President Joe Biden’s words fell so flat. “I am devastated and outraged,” he said, the words contrasting strangely with his history vis-à-vis Israel and his Middle East policy in general; the hampering of Israel’s defensive war, and the funding of Iran, which in turns funds Hamas.

The very next day, of course, Biden turned around and blamed the execution of Jews on the Jews themselves, via the man who represents them, Netanyahu.

Kamala Harris' public reaction to the six hostage deaths, in contrast with Biden's brief statement, was long, careful, and noncommittal—so balanced it was almost a refutation that what happened to Hersh was in any way special in proportion to the thousands of dead in Gaza. Stuff happened to Israelis, she seemed to say, but also to the people of Gaza (emphasis added):

On October 7, Hersh Goldberg-Polin—an American citizen—was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists. He was just 23 years old, attending a music festival with friends. We now know he was murdered by Hamas. His body was recovered today in the tunnels under Rafah, along with five other hostages.
Doug and my prayers are with Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s parents, and with everyone who knew and loved Hersh. When I met with Jon and Rachel earlier this year, I told them: You are not alone. That remains true as they mourn this terrible loss. Americans and people around the world will pray for Jon, Rachel, and their family and send them love and strength. As is said in the Jewish tradition, may Hersh’s memory be a blessing.
Hamas is an evil terrorist organization. With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands. I strongly condemn Hamas’ continued brutality, and so must the entire world. From its massacre of 1,200 people to sexual violence, taking of hostages, and these murders, Hamas’ depravity is evident and horrifying.

The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel—and American citizens in Israel—must be eliminated and Hamas cannot control Gaza. The Palestinian people too have suffered under Hamas’ rule for nearly two decades. President Biden and I will never waver in our commitment to free the Americans and all those held hostage in Gaza.

Shiva tent for Hersh Goldberg-Polin, seen from a distance, Jerusalem

Signing the guest book at the Goldberg-Polin shiva

The worst of the three was Tim Walz, who had nothing at all to say about our dead. When asked for his reaction to the executions, his expression shifted abruptly; his mouth turning briefly downward into an angry frown. Suddenly deaf, he pretended not to hear, thanked the crowd, then walked away, dismissing the crowd with a wave

Reporter: "What's your reaction to the 6 hostages being found dead in Gaza?"

Tim Walz ignores the question like Biden and said "Thanks everybody". pic.twitter.com/sw02ctFsH4
— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) September 1, 2024

In our fresh state of grief, the sense of betrayal cuts a little deeper. But not by much. Israeli Jews, better than most, understand that Jewish history repeats itself, with betrayal by friends a common feature. The very heavens may have wept for our six, but many bad "friends" did not.

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!

"Jewish Voice for Peace" pretends to be moral:

Every life is precious.

As Jews, our tradition teaches us b’tzelem elohim — every life is precious. Every person is an entire world, and every death is a world extinguished.

This past weekend, 106 people were killed in Palestine – 100 of those were Palestinians, and six were Israelis.
We mourn each and every life. That’s why we’ve spent eleven months mobilizing our immense grief into action.

Because every life is precious — equally so — we refuse the systems that treat some lives as more worthy of grief and protection than others. This past weekend, Biden spoke only of six Israeli deaths, and said nothing about the daily genocidal death and destruction the Israeli military is carrying out on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The mainstream media followed suit. Every life lost is a tragedy — but from reading the news, one would think that the six Israeli hostages were the only people with grieving families.

This is how today's antisemites pretend that they only care about morality.

Every life is not equally precious and every death is not equally tragic. Everyone with a brain knows that. The Geneva Conventions knows that. International humanitarian law understands this. Every nation knows that. Civilian life must be protected more than soldiers' lives; soldiers' lives must be protected more than terrorist lives.

Only moral midgets who say kaddish for Hamas terrorists pretend not to know this.

JVP is equating the six Israelis who were abducted at a music concert and murdered last week with Ahmed Wadiyya, the Hamas commander who led the invasion of Moshav Netiv Ha’asara on October 7 and who tossed a grenade in a shelter with Gil Taasa and his two young sons Koren, 12 and Shay. Gil jumped on the grenade, saving his children who witnessed their father being murdered. Wadiyya then calmly took a Coke from the refrigerator and drank it in front of the crying children.

That is only one monster who JVP is mourning and claiming is as holy as heroic Gil Taasa.

Of course, JVP knows they are full of crap. The entire reason to publish this perversion of morality is not to say Palestinian lives are precious but to water down the value of Jewish lives, to pretend that all Jews are as guilty and as deserving of death as the worst Hamas murderers and rapists.

To equate the lives of Palestinian terrorists who were eliminated while planning attacks on Jews with Jews who are brutally murdered and executed by those terrorists is disgusting. It is pure antisemitism.

JVP is the lowest of the low.

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!

This week's insane antisemitism in Turkish media

As I've been documenting over the past couple of months, Turkish media is virulently antisemitic. It doesn't even pretend to be merely "anti-Zionist;" there is no distinction between Jews and Zionists.

Here are some examples from the past few days.

In Milat Gazeti, Muhammad Oskilinc - an Islamic cleric with a regular column inciting hate for Jews - writes:

As the saying goes, Jews are “both guilty and powerful”, they have always committed crimes against humanity and human values throughout history. But on the other hand, with the enormous media power in their hands, they have managed to present themselves as an oppressed, innocently pushed and pushed poor people. Since they have executed this plan very well, they still continue to receive large amounts of compensation from many European countries. The grandfathers of Europeans witnessed dozens of crimes of Jews and exiled them from their countries. But over time, many insidious plans have presented to their grandchildren that Jews are as clean as a spoonful of milk and innocent. Then, step by step, the lie that they were exiled by their grandfathers without guilt was pumped in, and then the Europeans were brought to the position of standing behind the Jews no matter what, with both compensation and a guilty mindset.

This cursed nation, cursed by Allah (swt) dozens of times, has managed to present itself as a victim and a wretched to the entire humanity. For this; the cinema, theater sector and the entire art world have been taken under control. The educational curriculums of the countries and then the entire internet world have been mobilized. The history of the nations has been forgotten and a new and false history has been invented that suits the interests and benefits of the Jews. In other words, the memories of the nations have been erased and a new memory has been loaded. Pressure has been put on the parliaments of almost all countries and bringing up the crimes of the Jews has been made a crime by law under the name of “ANTI-SEMITISM”.

Yes, people can be misled, deceived, and even their history and archives can be designed in reverse. But nothing can be erased from the divine archive. When you look at the Holy Quran, it is immediately understood how dark and hostile to humanity this cursed people are. ...

In fact, it is not possible for this cursed people to escape the humiliation collar that has been put around their necks because of their corrupt character and their hostility towards humanity and human values.

Yeni Akit quotes Akşam newspaper writer Hüseyin Besli's insane railing against Jews and the West:

Like all false structures, the divinity of the West and the existence of the State of Israel will soon come to an end, and the Jews will be condemned to live in disarray and misery on earth, as they deserve.

Because Jews are the perpetrators of unforgivable sins and crimes...

That is why today's Israel is a country inspired by George Orwell, where animals live and are ruled by wild animals.

Just as Abraham put Nimrod, the symbol of human deification, in his place, today's false god puts humanity in its place in the person of the people of Gaza. I hope and pray that; just like Nimrod was defeated and killed by a fly, the people of Gaza will enter through the West's nose and spill their brains on the ground, God willing..."

Popular Turkish news site Haber7 calls closing of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron from Muslim worship ten days a year "systematic genocide."

Ali Barskanmay writes in Karar about the antisemitism in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and concludes that it was prompted by how evil Jews are to begin with.

At least in Egypt and Morocco, there are also articles about the history of Jews in those countries that are not overtly hostile. I have yet to see any such articles in Turkish media since I started looking a couple of months ago.

Arabic media used to be this bad, and they were shamed by Western media reporting on the most hateful articles translated by MEMRI. At this time, Turkish media is the most antisemitic in the world, with Yemen in a distant second place (since Yemen doesn't try to dress up its hate in intellectual arguments as Turkey does.)

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!

I received this press release:

Governor Henry McMaster, in partnership with the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), invites you to attend a significant, one-day forum on addressing and combating antisemitism in higher education.

The event will take place at the University of South Carolina Pastides Alumni Center from 9:00am to 7:00pm on September 9, 2024.

The event will provide a platform for many individuals to share experiences, concerns, and insights, as well as discuss actionable strategies to prevent and respond to incidents of hate, discrimination, and intolerance on college and university campuses.

This is most welcome.

There was a similar two day summit in Virginia in June, about the larger problem of antisemitism but also with significant discussion of antisemitism on campus:

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin addressed the summit and received the CAM Civic Leadership Award for his dedication to fighting antisemitism and religious bigotry of all forms.

“The work in front of us is to undo so much of the hate that has become embedded in our culture and our society today,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin. “We owe it to our future to stand strong in this moment, to stand together in this moment.”

...Attendees also heard directly from a Virginia Tech student leader about the state of antisemitism at universities, as part of a panel entitled “Free Speech or Hate Speech? Addressing the Crisis on Campus.”

“One of the biggest challenges for Jewish students this year is feeling and being isolated,” Virginia Tech student leader Vivian Cohen said. “But even though Jewish students right now are tired, we are not defeated. We will continue to proudly express our identities on campus.”

It is refreshing to see some governors willing to tackle antisemitism, without watering down the topic by adding in "Islamophobia" as the modern antisemites insist.

(h/t MtTB)

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!

09/03 Links Pt2: Islamism's Assault on Israel Is a Crime Against All of Humanity; Time to nix 'Palestine': Terrorists aren't entitled to a state

From Ian:

Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed: Islamism's Assault on Israel Is a Crime Against All of Humanity

As a Muslim committed to Islam, and thus starkly opposed to the mendacious, totalitarian imposter of Islam that is Islamism, the underpinning of all Hamas's words, deeds, and diabolical aspirations, I and countless other Muslims around the world who saw a humble Muslim Israeli (Farhan al-Qadi) rescued by the IDF, only to witness the appalling execution of 6 Israeli hostages at the last moment of rescue, are reaffirmed in our mission to expose, disavow, reject and dismantle Islamism by all means possible.

Far from a moral stance, tolerating Hamas or even going so far as to celebrate it as in some way "defenders" of the Palestinians against Israel is, in fact, an immoral fallacy.

Hamas murders Jew after Jew while expending Palestinian lives to do so, its appetite for death boundless.

The vile murder of 6 Israeli hostages tells us who Hamas is; the heroic rescue of Bedouin captive Farhan al-Qadi tells us who Israel is.

JPost Editorial: UN, time to end your inaction and help bring home the remaining hostages

For a UN official to draw an equivalency between the hostages abducted by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists being held in Israeli jails is outrageous – and the secretary-general, António Guterres, should at the very least censure if not dismiss the Italian jurist, who should know better.

But Guterres himself has failed to condemn Hamas for murdering the six hostages. “I will never forget my meeting last October with the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and other hostage families,” he posted on X. “Today’s tragic news is a devastating reminder of the need for the unconditional release of all hostages and an end to the nightmare of war in Gaza.”

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, noted that Guterres refused to name the perpetrators while equating their horrible deliberate execution with Israel’s effort to release them.

“The United Nations top apparatus – its Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council – has never specifically condemned Hamas,” she told Fox News Digital. “UN denial of the right of Israeli self-defense and its promotion of violence against the people of Israel has never been more clear. No amount of UN photo-ops with hostages or their families will erase the reality of the UN’s insidious role in the nightmare of war in Israel for seven decades.”

According to the Preamble of the UN Charter signed in 1945, the purpose of the United Nations is, inter alia, “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.”

As we mourn for the six hostages, we urge the UN to change its course, condemn Hamas, and take action immediately on behalf of the 101 hostages it is still holding.

Why Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitic

Anti-Zionism undermines the millennia-old ties between Judaism and the Land of Israel.

While preparing to leave my position as a tenured full professor and academic administrator at Rutgers University in May, I was called out for contending that calls for Israel's destruction, including the view that Israel has no right to defend itself or its citizens, are antisemitic.

Anti-Zionism - opposition to the Jewish right of self-determination in the Jewish people's historic homeland - is antisemitic because it attacks a core belief of Judaism.

Three times a day, traditional Jews pray for the rebuilding of Jerusalem as part of the Jewish homeland. Academics would be outraged if anyone tried to dictate to any other religion what its beliefs should be.

09/03 Links Pt1: The deaths of these hostages shame the Western conscience; Hamas's Inhumanity Is Laid Bare Once Again; Hersh Goldberg-Polin and ‘The Hope’

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The deaths of these hostages shame the Western conscience

Now this is resistance. Unprepared, unarmed, these six young people did what they could to resist the anti-Semitic savagery of the invading army from Gaza. They repelled its grenades, rescued some of its intended targets, tended to the victims of its racist sadism. They didn’t ask for war, they didn’t expect war, they didn’t deserve war. But when it came, brutishly intruding on their kibbutzim and parties, they took action that helped to minimise the Jewish people’s suffering. It is a testament to Western radicals’ swirling moral disarray and their detachment from civilisational values that they referred to the racist invaders of Israel as the ‘resistance’, and the Jewish heroes who fought back as ‘colonisers’.

But this goes beyond foolish ‘left’ apologism for Hamas. It goes beyond excuse-making for terror. There is a case to be made that the self-styled progressive conscience of the West has not been complacent in the face of Hamas’s barbarism, but complicit. Many in the West played an active role in justifying the kidnapping of people like Goldberg-Polin, Lobanov, Gat, Sarusi, Yerushalmi and Danino. They actively bolstered the kidnappers’ claims to be resistance fighters, and they actively prevented the raising of awareness of the kidnap victims, particularly through the destruction of posters featuring their faces. They were more than bystanders to a pogrom – they were unpaid PR men for the pogromists.

Consider the feral mobs of anti-Semites that clawed kidnap posters off public buildings and lampposts. The six dead of Rafah will have been on some of those posters. Indeed, in April, in Melbourne, Australia, a huge ‘Bring Them Home’ mural featuring the face of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, among others, was graffitied by anti-Israel agitators. They daubed ‘FREE PALESTINE’ in massive letters over his face and the faces of the other stolen Jews.

This rash, racist allergy to any awareness-raising of the Israeli hostages was pure spin for Hamas. In destroying the posters, or daubing them with shit, or scribbling ‘coloniser’ on them, Western Israelophobes were slavishly amplifying Hamas’s insistence that these people are not innocent. That they deserve persecution. That you absolutely should not sympathise with, and in fact you should hate, the likes of those six young men and women who were held and brutalised and murdered in Rafah. That people in the West, in virtually every major city, assisted in Hamas’s dehumanisation of the Jews in its captivity should chill us to the bone.

Or consider the frenzied ‘radical’ hostility to any effort by Israel to rescue its seized citizens. It is just three months since the social-media craze of ‘All Eyes on Rafah’. Nearly 50million people, including celebs, shared that slogan on Instagram, the aim being to condemn Israel for even thinking about sending troops into Rafah. We now know that that is where the six hostages, and others, were being held in rank, repulsive conditions. We now know Hamas was using Rafah as a base for attacking Israel. ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ was no progressive cry – it was an act of woke appeasement. ‘Leave Rafah to Hamas’, was the sick undertone of this reckless trend. Not content with defiling images of the six young Israelis interned in Rafah, the virtuous of the West then raged against military action that might have led to their rescue. They made themselves the defenders of Hamas’s wicked dominion over Rafah.

Kamala Harris has questions to answer here. She’s issued a welcome, angry statement on the slaughter of the six hostages, describing it as ‘an outrage’. And yet for months she sternly instructed Israel not to launch a ‘major military operation’ in Rafah. There will be ‘consequences’, she warned. It is now known that in Rafah, an American citizen was being held captive. Now killed. Is this the first time in history an American leader warned of ‘consequences’ over the rescue of an American rather than over the kidnap of an American? As National Review summarises it, ‘Kamala Harris warned Israel of “consequences” if it invaded Rafah, where Hamas just murdered an American hostage’.

Here’s the only question that matters right now: are Jewish lives worth fighting for? Some of us think they are. Others, from the top of politics to the frenzied anti-Semites on the streets, seem to think otherwise. It is tempting to see the West’s moral disorder over Israel-Hamas as a consequence of that old problem, ‘the sleep of reason’, the sleep of our conscience. But in truth, the West’s conscience has been wide awake, and excitable, and noisy, and it has sided not with kidnapped Jews, but with their kidnappers. Let us hope the memory of the six slain will be a blessing – and let us hope their deaths will be a lesson for a West that seems utterly morally lost.

Hamas's Inhumanity Is Laid Bare Once Again

The international narrative continues to be overwhelmingly anti-Israel, even as IDF special forces extricate the bodies of innocent Israeli hostages dragged from their homes on Oct. 7.

They were kept in tunnels for months on end, tortured and starved, only to be killed as help arrived.

The sheer mercilessness of their captors does not appear to exercise the same people around the world so eager to join pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Where are the mass protests against the inhumanity of Hamas?

Hamas is happy to sacrifice as many Palestinians as it can to turn international opinion.

That it has partly succeeded in doing so is a blot on the people unable to make a moral distinction between those who perpetrated this violence and those responding to it.

Bassam Tawil: Israel: Ceasefire Deal Will Prevent Hostages from Coming Home, Anti-Government Protests Only Embolden Hamas

Hamas leaders, who are closely observing the protests, are likely to harden their stance in the hope that the Israeli government will give in to the demonstrators' demands, including an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has the Israeli public pressuring their government to allow Hamas to "live to fight another day": to rearm, regroup and continue attacking Israelis – as Hamas official Ghazi Hamad vowed.

Hamas leaders are banking on the Biden administration to compel the Israeli government to give in to the terror group's demands.... It has long been the dream of Hamas and many Palestinians to see the US turn its back on Israel.

Hamas's primary goal is to remain in power and return to the pre-October 7 era, when it built a large terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Hamas knows it will not be able to accomplish its aims without a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an official end of the war.

That is why Hamas is insisting that Israel withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Israel's presence there obstructs Hamas's efforts to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip through cross-border tunnels, as it has been doing for the past two decades.

Hamas is reportedly demanding US and international guarantees that Israel will not target the terror group anytime in the future. Until then, Hamas will continue to hold on to many of the hostages as an "insurance policy."

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 atrocities, will not release all the hostages at once. He will continue to physically surround himself with many of them to ensure that Israel does not kill him. Sinwar does not care how many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip perish, as long as he is permitted to stay alive.

Even if Hamas were to initially release 10 or 20 hostages as part of any agreement, who could ensure that the remaining captives would be released? Are we supposed to take Hamas's word for it? Are we supposed to believe that the Americans, Egyptians and Qataris would be able to force Hamas to comply with the terms of any agreement?

Palestinian media is reporting:

Social media activists circulated a shocking video clip, showing extremist Jewish settlers stealing the contents of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank, and turning it into a Jewish temple under the protection of the occupation police, to practice their Talmudic prayers in it.

The video shows extremist Jewish settlers seizing the contents of the Ibrahimi Mosque from the ground up, placing the Talmud inside it, in a clear provocation of the feelings of Muslims in the West Bank, and placing wooden barriers inside the mosque.

Here's the "shocking video:"

For most of the year, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is divided into Muslim and Jewish sections to allow everyone to pray. For ten days of the year, it is exclusively Jewish; and for ten days it is exclusively Muslim.

Every single time it becomes exclusively Jewish, Muslim media freaks out and publishes stories like this one pretending the Jews are taking it over.

In this case, the Jews are marking Rosh Chodesh Elul. They are wheeling in mechitzot to separate mean and women worshippers (not wooden barricades.) They are bringing in a Holy Ark, not stealing Islamic furniture.

Everyone in Hebron, Muslim and Jewish alike, know all of this. They choose to create these fake news reports anyway, to incite hate against Jews.

And so it goes.

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Stupid recent academic paper #2: "Bridging the Jesus Event and the Nakba"

This piece of drivel was published last month in Political Theology:

Reclaiming History and Memory: Bridging the Jesus Event and the Nakba
Abeer Khshiboon

This article examines the interconnected histories and memories of two Palestinian points in time: the historical Jesus event and the Nakba. It critiques colonial-imperial narratives that have historically disconnected the Jesus event from Palestine, often interpreting it as a divine sacrifice that signified Europe’s transition into a new era: Christianity. Inspired by Ahn Byung-Mu’s work on the minjung or ochlos (the sheep without a shepherd, the dehumanized and alienated crowd in the Gospel of Mark), this study draws on critical historical Jesus scholarship, seeking to reevaluate the journey of the ochlos between exile and redemption. It offers a postcolonial interpretation of the Jesus event through the concepts of collective memory and trauma, arguing for the importance of revisiting the past to address and reframe present injustices and disenfranchisements. The conclusion discusses the relationship between remembrance and belongingness, emphasizing its potential to challenge memory erasure and trauma denialism.

The author appears to be an Arab Israeli Christian who is now a doctoral student in Berlin. Her paper praises the antisemitic "liberation theology" of today's Palestinian Christians.

This goes beyond the Christmas memes of Palestinians as Jesus. The "scholar" not only compares today's Zionist Jews to all the bad guys in her view of history - she claims Palestinians are the real Jews.

To recapitulate, the Galileanness of Jesus, inspirational on many levels, helps us to reconstruct the notion of belonging in the context of Palestine today. Just as Galileans were rendered enemies under the temple-state of Jerusalem, so too are today’s Palestinians cast as such under Zionism, where they are denied the right to belong to their biblical memory, history, culture, and homeland and denied recognition as Ām HaĀretz. More liberatory and decolonial theologies enable us to better think through and thus to reclaim the oneness of history and memory, of the Jesus event and the Nakba. Whether it is in stories of Galilee’s struggle against Jerusalem, Jesus’s against David, Biblical Israel’s against Roman Palestina, the crowd of sinners’ against the laos, or Filastin’s against the Zionist regime, each time we find the ochlos anew, exiled from human rights, and persistently yearning for a single sense of home. ... Here and now, it is indispensable to reread Palestine’s disenfranchised stories from Solomon’s Temple to Khurbān HaBāyit all the way to the Nakba; they seem to carry exiles that are yet to be remembered as one.

I see a lot of "scholarship" that pretends to find parallels between disparate situations and extracts meanings from them. In reality, you can throw two darts at any history timeline and find parallels between any two events as long as you ignore the differences.

It is not actual scholarship; it is reading tea leaves. And in this case, it is doing so in the service of promoting hate against Jews.

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"The Academic Question of Palestine", by Walaa Alqaisiya, was published as an introduction to a special edition of the Middle East Critique journal in August.

Here is its abstract:

Building on the work of Edward Said, we maintain that Palestine constitutes a unique question with special status in international academic spaces, particularly in the West, because of its entanglement with other imperial and settler colonial forms of dispossession. We argue that the special place that Zionism and its defence has occupied for decades in academia has rendered Palestine one of the thorniest and most divisive issues of our time. In the new millennium, the birth of the BDS movement; the emergence of new solidarities with global anti-racist movements; the scholarly and human rights consensus that Israel constitutes a regime settler colonial apartheid; the acceleration of Zionist violence, until the Gaza genocide, have generated new forms of repression and resistance in the academic space. This Special Issue offers the tools for understanding these recent transformations of the question of Palestine.

Notice how academia has created a completely fake version of Israel that is supported by its own false articles to create an edifice built out of playing cards.

The author writes, as fact, that Israel is guilty of settler colonialism, of apartheid, of genocide - all lies and all easily disproven, but the desire to pretend that these are true outweigh any counter-arguments to these pseudo-scholars.

The only thing unique about "Palestine" is Jews. If an identical "nation" had been created anywhere else in the world, it would not get one percent of the publicity or interest. If it wasn't for antisemitism, the word "Palestine" would mean today what it meant in 1948: the English translation of Eretz Yisrael, nothing more.

The actual paper starts off with a quote that is a lie:

“We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again.”

(Gaza Academics and Administrators)

Really? The universities in Gaza were built from tents?

Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) was founded in 1978.

Al-Azhar University-Gaza was esstablished in 1991.

Gaza University was founded in 2000.

Palestine Polytechnic University, which has a Gaza branch, was established in 1978 in Hebron, with the Gaza branch more recent.

Notice that every one of these major universities in Gaza were established under Israeli "occupation."

So when the paper says Israel is engaging in "scholasticide" against Gazans, it doesn't want you to know that Israel approved and allowed each Gaza university to be built to begin with. If Israel intended to destroy all academia in the territories, why did no university exist under Jordanian and Egyptian rule, and only under Israeli rule?

Every paragraph in the article includes lies and deceit. Nothing negative is said about Hamas, and every Israeli strike in Gaza is framed as a deliberate act of extermination of civilians instead of an attack on a terror group for whom civilians only exist to protect it. It even frames the Simchat Torah massacre of civilians in heroic military terms, as "the military operation launched by Hamas and Palestinian militant groups on October 7."

That is just one example of the sloppiness and falsehood that we see in academic papers about Israel, multiple times every month. And I hope to show other examples just from August 2024.

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Hamas has proven that they are Nazis. You don't negotiate with Nazis. You kill them.

Hamas has admitted that they murdered the six Israeli hostages. They made videos of each of them in the hours before they executed them by gunshot, and are starting to use those videos to further split Israeli society and put political pressure on the government to allow Hamas to survive.

Hamas said they will continue to murder the hostages as long as the IDF attempts to rescue them.

Here's a poster they made with that disgusting promise.

It says, in Hebrew and Arabic, "Military pressure equals death and failure... an exchange deal equals freedom and life." Yet even Hamas posters show that they are happy to execute hostages.

As the Nazis often did in death camps, Hamas is pretending that their choice to murder Jews is a natural outcome of the choices Jews make. If Jews in death camps tried to escape, or to attack guards, the Nazis would murder more Jews and pretend that the Jews who tried to save their lives or fight back were responsible for the innocents murdered afterwards.

It is a level of sadism that Hamas shares with Hitler's henchmen.

I don't want to minimize the impossible position that the government of Israel is in, simultaneously trying to save the hostages but trying not to allow Hamas to be in a position to do the exact same thing again.

But make no mistake: Hamas has admitted that do not care about morality, or international humanitarian law, or the laws of armed conflict. They are cold blooded executioners who blame their own murderous ways on innocents.

When Hamas and its Western defenders claim that the terror group has "no choice," they are claiming that Hamas has no free will. Only animals have no choice when they attack humans or others, and only animals cannot be blamed for those deaths. Hamas and its defenders are justifying murders by saying Hamas has no choice but to murder and rape Israelis. They are admitting that, at a minimum, Hamas are animals - by their own logic.

One cannot negotiate with animals.

But in reality, Hamas terrorists are biologically human. They do make the choice of whether to murder or not, whether to rape or not, whether to put the families of the hostages through hell or not.

Which means they aren't animals. They are Nazis.

Anyone who gives credence to Hamas' claims is helping Hamas. They are buying into the logic that Hamas has no choice but to murder. Doing so plays into Hamas' hands, and that is exactly the reason Hamas spends so much time torturing the families of the hostages with highly edited and coerced videos.

Blaming Bibi for trying to save hostages is doing exactly what Hamas wants the world to do.

This week's events prove (as if October 7 already didn't) that Hamas and its allies are today's Nazis. My heart goes out to the families of the remaining hostages but the world cannot treat Hamas as anything other than what they are. By giving them respect, by blaming Israel for failed negotiations, by protesting against Israel instead of Hamas, people are doing exactly what these modern day Nazis want them to do.

But if the world truly internalized how evil Hamas is and treated Hamas like the Nazis they are, Hamas would have no leverage.

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Sorry, no linkdumps today

Ian could not do the linkdumps today for technical reasons beyond his control. Apologies!

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Peace of Mind: Israel is in the forefront of psychological health for soldiers returning from battle

The academic journal Military Psychology published an article about Israel's Peace of Mind program in 2022:

Peace of mind: Promoting psychological growth and reducing the suffering of combat veterans

ABSTRACT: The Peace of Mind (POM) program was designed to enable combat veterans in Israel to process their combat experience, address difficulties in the transition to civilian life and facilitate psychological growth as a result of their military experience. During the course of the program, 1068 participants were studied at four time points. Post-traumatic symptoms were measured using the PTSD checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), and post-traumatic growth (PTG) was measured using the Post Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI). Multilevel Modeling (MLM) was used to assess symptom and psychological trajectories for all participants and for those who began with and without PTSD symptoms, respectively. The results demonstrated that those who began the program with elevated PTSD symptoms experienced a significant reduction in PTSD symptoms following the completion of the intensive element of the program. Additionally, all participants demonstrated an increase in PTG following the intensive section of the program and this was maintained throughout follow-up.

The Israel Psychotrauma Center, known as Metiv, has built this program.

A unique and key part of the program has entire groups of soldiers visit a US Jewish community:

The team and their facilitators travel to a Jewish community outside of Israel. This eight day workshop is the core of the program and includes intensive group sessions from 8 AM to 4 PM every day, followed by varied evening activities after an intensive day as well as quality time with each other and the host families. The distance from Israel during this phase of the therapeutic process plays a crucial role in creating a safe, quiet and supportive environment.

In a sense, the diaspora Jews help the Jewish soldiers get whole again.

Various Jewish communities in the US are now volunteering to host these groups in their communities.

This is just one small example of how Israel and the larger Jewish world, thrust into a position of constant battle readiness that they never sought, manage to come up with innovative and creative ways to help everyone, including soldiers, who are forced by circumstances to move between the military world and everyday life.

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Forensics experts have determined that Hamas executed six Israeli hostages late last week.

These six - Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi - were alive a few days ago. Hamas murdered them.

All of them were shot multiple times from close range.

They weren't killed in battle. They weren't killed from airstrikes. They were deliberately executed by Hamas.

Their kidnappings were a war crime. Their being taken hostage with the intent to trade them for murderers was a war crime. Their ten months of imprisonment were a crime against humanity. Their executions were a heinous crime against humanity.

And as of this writing, not a word of condemnation has been tweeted by Amnesty or Human Rights Watch or Oxfam or the UN Human Rights Council.

These are groups who are keen to condemn Jews marching with flags in Jerusalem, or Jews praying in their holiest spot, or Jews renting out houses as Airbnbs on the "wrong" side of an arbitrary line. Yet when Jews are summarily executed by Palestinians, they are suddenly struck mute.

So you know how they claim to care about international law? How they say they care about morality? How they pretend to care about human rights?

They don't give s damn about any of them. They only condemn things that align with their politics, and Palestinians murdering Jews is not something they consider abhorrent or immoral. They sort of admire them.

Sometimes, in order to appear even handed, they will write a report about undeniable and egregious violations of international law by Palestinian terror groups. One in perhaps 30 reports will mention rocket attacks by Hamas or rapes of Israelis. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule: they support Palestinian "resistance" in all its forms, but are forced to sometimes pretend to be consistent and issue half hearted condemnations while invariably at the same time also condemning Israel.

But there is no immediate, reflexive horror at Hamas being proven to do the most heinous war crimes that exist. They remain silent in the fact of human rights and international law violations, when Israeli Jews are the victims.

They are the worst hypocrites on Earth. Their silence proves that their incessant condemnations of Israel are merely political and worthless. Because if they cannot immediately condemn Hamas executions of Jewish hostages, they are against human rights for people they also hate.

And those people are proud nationalistic Jews.

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