Dearborn, October 31 - The Democratic Party nominee for the presidency made further efforts this week to maintain an edge with Muslim voters in this crucial swing state, with a campaign statement today that, if elected, she will commission a likeness of the recently-eliminated leader of Hezbollah alongside those of four iconic US presidents in South Dakota.
The Kamala Harris for President organization issued a statement via X and several other online media to the effect that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel assassinated in a targeted airstrike on his Beirut bunker just over a month ago, deserves to have his face commemorated and venerated next to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
The X post also contained a short video clip of Harris attempting a Lebanese Arabic accent as she sang the praises of "Sayed Nasrallah" and the hope he brought to millions of Shiite Muslims.
Polls have Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump at a statistical dead heat in several swing states. Both candidates and parties have made overtures to the American Muslim communities, especially in this area of Michigan, a stronghold of the demographic. Trump campaigned there last week, securing an endorsement from one prominent community leader, though the extent of that leader's influence remains open to debate. Muslim Americans have favored the Democratic Party, by and large, for at least two decades, especially after 9/11 and its aftermath, when a GOP administration held power.
Recent dissatisfaction among vocal elements of the community regarding what they view as the Biden-Harris administration's insufficient response to Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip has led to numerous threats not to vote for Harris in the election - despite her rival having moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the city as the capital of the Jewish State, acknowledged the legitimacy of Israeli settlement in territories the Palestinians claim, and brokered regional peace deals that sidelined the Palestinian issue, when he held the office from 2017 to 2021.
The impact of Harris's Rushmore promise remains unclear. Her choice of Nasrallah over, for example, the more-recently-slain Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza, an actual Palestinian and not merely the head of an Iranian proxy militia, has raised eyebrows among both Muslims and political analysts.
A campaign spokesman explained that they had originally decided to promise a likeness of Sinwar, but selected Nasrallah instead when engineers warned them that the size of his ears would render an accurate reproduction impossible.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
At first blush, the New York Times op-ed published today, "Stop the Boycott of Israeli Culture," seems to be a passionate response to the open letter calling on all authors to stop working with any Israeli cultural institutions.
But the piece, written by Israeli literary agents Deborah Harris and Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs, ironically appears to defend some kinds of censorship.
Some readers may view this column as a gripe of the privileged Israeli creative class. But if they believe that we sit here in comfort and tacit approval of the war in Gaza, that means they don’t know that many Israelis are desperate for this war to end. We are traumatized, we are burying our dead, we are caught in the dread and anguish of what this war has wrought here and in Gaza and in Lebanon — if they don’t know those things, do the writers who signed that letter even read?
...What does this rejection achieve other than to serve as fodder for nationalist parties who exploited these boycotts for their own political gain? When Israel is isolated, the country’s extremists become only more entrenched.
...You cannot solve a problem by looking at only one part of the equation. You cannot understand the terrible tragedy of this place if you read only the literature of one side. You cannot advocate Palestinian rights by excluding and alienating the people who would fight for them from the only battleground where they might be won.
Targeting the Israeli publishing industry as if we have the power to negotiate a cease-fire deal or depose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a gesture of foolish acrimony that contradicts the very thing literature is supposed to do. If you believe that books have the power to change hearts and minds, why wouldn’t you try to use that power constructively instead of engaging in a boycott, to take advantage of cultural institutions to argue your case on behalf of the Palestinians?
Throughout the article, the authors implicitly divide Israel up into good Jews and bad Jews, and much of the argument is that the boycott will silence the good Jews along with the bad.
What is missing here is any argument that all censorship and cultural boycotts are inherently immoral, especially for opinions that one disagrees with (if they do not cross the line into incitement to violence.)
This op-ed is not a liberal argument. It is an argument begging the Western progressives that leftist Israelis not be lumped in with those who everyone apparently agrees really should be silenced and censored.
Those who want to see Hamas and Hezbollah defeated and those who want to see Iran's support of terror groups stopped do not have a place in this discussion. Other opinions, such as that Israel has strategic and cultural interest in maintaining presence in Judea and Samaria, or that a Palestinian state would encourage terror and war rather than bring peace, are considered beyond the pale: everyone agrees they must be silenced, let alone occupy a section of the "Israel/Palestine" table of Western bookstores.
Their argument is that boycotting Israel hurts the very Palestinians the haters pretend to support, not that censorship is wrong altogether. Those who cannot even bring this obvious point up for discussion are part of the problem, not the solution. Throwing those whose opinions you disagree with under the bus in the name of being against boycotts is not exactly a winning argument.
We continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracize their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
The exclusion of anyone who doesn’t unilaterally condemn Israel is an inversion of morality and an obfuscation of reality.
History is full of examples of self-righteous sects, movements and cults who have used short-lived moments of power to enforce their vision of purity, to persecute, exclude, boycott and intimidate those with whom they disagreed, who made lists of people with ‘bad’ views, who burned ‘sinful’ books (and sometimes ‘sinful’ people).
Over the past year, planned bookstore appearances by Jewish authors have been canceled, ads for books about Israel have been rejected, book readings have been shut down, literary groups have been targeted, and activists have publicized lists of “Zionist” authors to harass.
The instincts and motivations behind cultural boycotts, in practice and throughout history, are directly in opposition to the liberal values most writers hold sacred.
Boycotts against authors and those who work with them is illiberal and dangerous.
That is the difference between a craven argument to save your own job and a principled stand for liberal values. That the New York Times prefers to platform the former tells us a lot about the state of the mainstream media today.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The New York Times has an article showing that the IDF has set off controlled demolitions in large areas of various villages in southern Lebanon near the border.
Satellite imagery and videos show widespread destruction in six villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, revealing 1,085 buildings that have been leveled or badly damaged since its Oct. 1 invasion aimed at crippling the militant group Hezbollah.
Videos posted to social media by the Israeli military and individual soldiers, and verified by The Times, show that at least 200 of the buildings were blown up in controlled demolitions, in which soldiers place and then remotely detonate explosives. Controlled demolitions were seen in five of the six towns: Blida, Kafr Kila, Mhaibib, Ramyah and Aita al Shaab. It couldn’t be determined how other buildings were damaged.
They then quote an international law expert:
Tom Dannenbaum, an associate professor of international law at Tufts University, said that nonmilitary structures may be targeted only if they are being used militarily, or if Israel has specific information that they are intended to be used that way. “It is not permitted to target an entire area in which there is a mix of military objectives and civilian objects,” he said.
Dannenbaum is (mostly) right. And from reading the article, it sounds like Israel is blowing up buildings indiscriminately.
But the New York Times asked Dannenbaum a loaded question, one that doesn't reflect reality.
The video that the NYT publishes of the controlled demolition of part of Ramyeh shows a spectacular set of explosions that seem to destroy much of the town.
The NYT says 40 buildings were destroyed. But Ramyeh has between 100-150 buildings.
Clearly, Israel chose only to destroy some and not the others. Why might that be?
The Times mentions other villages and towns hard-hit by demolitions:
The most severe destruction has been in the town of Meiss al-Jabal, which had a prewar population of a
In Aita al-Shaab, satellite imagery shows at least 206 buildings were destroyed, virtually flattening the entire eastern part of the village.
In Kafr Kila, the largest of the six communities that The Times analyzed, with a prewar population of about 10,000, at least 284 buildings were badly damaged or destroyed.
The small village of Mhaibib was also almost entirely destroyed in a controlled demolition, videos show. Satellite imagery shows that at least 76 buildings were destroyed, and only a few structures were still standing.
Elsewhere in the article, the Times gives a hint as to why Israel may have targeted specific sections of those areas,, but doesn't link that reason it to the demolitions:
In statements posted to social media, the Israeli military said that troops had found and destroyed Hezbollah tunnels underneath homes and other buildings in Meiss al-Jabal, Kafr Kila and Mhaibib, and under a hill in Aita al Shaab. It wasn’t possible to independently verify whether footage of tunnels was filmed in those towns. The Israeli military has also posted footage of tunnels it says were discovered elsewhere along the Lebanon-Israel border.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg of context that the NYT doesn't want readers to grasp.
The Times of Israel described what IDF soldiers are seeing in these villages that they are clearing:
Asked in how many homes his men have found weapons, Sebag responds that “in these villages it’s not just one or two houses, it’s all of the village. These are villages that are strongly identified with Hezbollah. In almost every home there are weapons and signs of identification with the organization.”
His men agree, with one telling The Times of Israel that they had found rifles on tables in many houses, ready for use and that weapons were even found in the village’s school and medical clinic.
If a house is used to store weapons, it is a military target. No question.
Now, if the newspaper would have asked the international law expert whether Israel can destroy tunnels underneath buildings, and buildings that have entrances to tunnels, and houses that have weapons ready to be used on their kitchen tables, and buildings like schools and medical clinics that are actually weapons depots, guess what he would have said?
Of course they can, because placing weapons in civilian structures turn them into military installations, under international law.
But the question was not framed that way. It was deliberately asked and answered in a way to make Israel look like it was likely violating international law.
There is another piece of context that the Times elliptically refers to but still obfuscates.
Here is its map of the villages it is discussing:
Every single one of these villages is within a half mile of the Israeli border.
Now, put it all together: The villages housed weapons in most buildings. They had military tunnels underneath them. Every single civilian building is utilized to hide military activity from Israel. They are easy walking distance to Israel.
The entire villages are obviously Hezbollah strongholds and meant to be used to invade Israel. The villages themselves were weaponized, not just certain buildings. These villages were specifically chosen by Hamas as ideal areas to stage October 7-type massacres of Israeli communities.
Can the entire villages be flattened under international law? Given what we saw Hamas do last year, a strong case could be made for that.
The Times did not tell its readers all the facts that would be relevant in determining the law, and it is hard to say that this was not deliberate.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
As the war in Lebanon heats up, people forget that Hezbollah was not just a threat because of its huge rocket and guided missile arsenal, but also because it was planning to invade Israel in a October 7 style pogrom.
In May, 2023, Hezbollah featured its Radwan Unit in a military exercise that they held in front of the media. According to its Al Manar mouthpiece,
The mujahideen carried out a simulation of a drone attack on a target inside the entity, and another of storming the border strip with occupied Palestine, and attacking vehicles on the other side before pulling a “body” from one of them and transporting it across the “border,” in what appeared to be a simulation of the capture of Israeli soldiers.
A high concrete wall was erected in the place, similar to the wall erected by the temporary Zionist entity at the border, and the slogans “We are coming” were written on it next to a picture of the Dome of the Rock, “We swear we will cross” and “With great force.” A number of resistance fighters breached this wall after blowing up parts of it.
At one point it appears that the Hezbollah terrorists are disguised as women with hijabs.
Some of the scenes are eerily similar to the videos we've seen of October 7.
Hezbollah, in front of a crowd of reporters, practiced war crimes including taking hostages.
This is why Israel needs to clear out southern Lebanon.
This is the sort of thing that people need to be reminded of.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
It’s a fair bet that the authors and publishing professionals who have called for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions didn’t anticipate the scale of revulsion and outrage they have caused.
After all, given the current tsunami of hatred and insanity directed at the Jewish people throughout the west, they may well have thought they were merely going along with the overwhelmingly accepted narrative in “progressive” circles — in other words, anyone whose opinion was worth bothering about — that Israel should be shunned as a pariah because of the war in Gaza.
Hundreds supporting a campaign organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, alongside Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine, Publishers for Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza and Fossil Free Books, have signed a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions which they claim have been “obfuscating, disguising and art-washing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades” and have thus been “complicit in genocide”.
“We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” they write.
Among the signatories are award-winning authors Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy, Guardian columnist Owen Jones, children’s author Michael Rosen and actress Miriam Margolyes.
The reaction to this letter from within their own creative world has been seismic. More than 1000 leading names in the entertainment industry have hit back. A counter-letter has been published by the Creative Community for Peace, signed by writers such as Lee Child, Bernard Henri-Lévy, Herta Müller, Sir Simon Schama, Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, David Mamet, Lionel Shriver and Elfriede Jelinek as well as names from film and TV.
Howard Jacobson said he was “staggered” that the boycott signatories could dream they had a right to silence other writers, while Lionel Shriver said they had sought to “intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals”.
Let’s remind ourselves against whom Israel is currently fighting: genocidal enemies who carried out the worst single set of atrocities against the Jews since the Holocaust and who openly declare their aim to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people. Instead of supporting the resistance to such evil, Rooney, Roy, Rosen and their fellow signatories are actively pumping out the propaganda lies being invented to promote that unspeakable cause.
The Guardian reports: Institutions that have never publicly recognised the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted.
But there are no “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” in international law. The only inalienable legal rights to the land belong to the Jews.
These much-garlanded authors and hangers-on aren’t targeting people because of what they are said to have done. They are attempting to silence Israelis because they have failed to express the only approved opinion by opposing their own government’s actions. That’s a totalitarian impulse to crush all dissent. And there’s worse still. As Lionel Shriver has written: But the intention is not only aimed at punishing Israel’s tiny cultural institutions. The boycott seeks to go well beyond the signatories and intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals. That includes writers who disagree with the organisers and do not believe that the IDF’s effort to root out Hamas qualifies as genocide as well as a range of Jewish writers in and outside of Israel whose views on this war may be tortured or finely nuanced. Because we must all speak as one.
The tactic Shriver is aptly describing is designed to set one Jew against the other, to act as a kind of proxy assassin on behalf of the Jew-basher who can thus claim to have clean hands.
Over 1,000 literary and entertainment stars from around the globe have signed an open letter in support of freedom of expression and against discriminatory boycotts.
The signatories of the letter include Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher, philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy, Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, actor Jeff Garlin, historians Sir Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, novelist Howard Jacobson and musicians Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons of Seventies rock band Kiss.
This broad and united call from prominent members of the literature and entertainment world to unequivocally voice support against boycotts represents the first of its kind.
Last week, an online petition was launched calling for a boycott on Israeli publishers, book festivals, literary agencies, and publications, organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, attracting support from authors Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy.
The letter in response, published on Tuesday, states that regardless of one’s own view on the war in the Middle East, “boycotts of creatives and creative institutions simply create more divisiveness and foment further hatred.”
It adds, referencing October 7, that the signatories “continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracise their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”
The motivation behind cultural boycotts, it argues, is “illiberal and dangerous”, and contrary to the “liberal values most writers hold sacred”.
“In fact,” the letter continues, “we believe that writers, authors, and books – along with the festivals that showcase them – bring people together, transcend boundaries, broaden awareness, open dialogue, and can affect positive change.”
It concludes by calling on “our friends and colleagues worldwide to join us in expressing their support for Israeli and Jewish publishers, authors and all book festivals, publishers, and literary agencies that refuse to capitulate to censorship based on identity or litmus tests.”
Other signatories of the letter, rejecting boycotts against authors and literary institutions, includes essayist Adam Gopnik, Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet, actresses Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing and Julianna Margulies, investor Haim Seban and Nobel Prize Award winner Elfriede Jelinek.
Hate, once it is unleashed and legitimized, will spread and mutate, targeting other minorities and vulnerable groups and, eventually, anyone who dares to question the mob mentality. Antisemitism in America isn't just a Jewish struggle; it's a fight for America's future.
But it's a fight that we are failing to recognize, address, and commit to winning.
How do we change course? One piece of encouraging news is that Americans are actually paying attention to the Middle East. Recent polls show that 62 percent are closely following the Israel-Hamas war, and 81 percent express greater sympathy for Israel than Hamas.
The reason is clear: most Americans understand that Israel is fighting for its very survival against terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose explicit mission is to annihilate Israel. But what many may not fully grasp is that these groups' ideologies aren't limited to the Middle East. Their virulent strain of hate, deeply rooted in antisemitism, has spread beyond the region and found fertile ground in Western democracies, including the United States.
So even as Americans recognize the high stakes in Israel, there remains a troubling disconnect to what they recognize at home. Only six percent of voters consider the Israel-Hamas war a top priority for the country, and a mere two percent list antisemitism as a pressing issue. These figures highlight a dangerous gap between perception and reality.
For Americans, supporting Jewish communities should be reason enough to confront antisemitism. But if more is needed, we must also recognize that the foundational principles that underpin American democracy cannot survive in a society where hate and intolerance are given space to flourish. When bigotry takes root, what follows is a breakdown in the social contract that binds us as a nation.
American Jews are under attack. If antisemitism continues to fester unchecked, it won't be long before other groups face the same threats.
How we respond today will define the nation we are tomorrow.
The protest was at the JW3 community centre on the Finchley Road last week. JW3’s offence was to host a conference sponsored by Haaretz, the left-wing Israeli newspaper that reliably covers Palestinian despair in Gaza and the West Bank. It was convened to discuss the future of the region, including the questions: How do allies committed to liberal democracy relate to a hard-right Israeli government? Who are the Palestinian partners for building a common future?
The insinuation of these question is that a hard-right Israeli government is to be feared and there is, potentially, a common future for Israelis and Palestinians. Delegates included Rula Hardal, a Palestinian and CEO of A Land For All, a Palestinian-Israeli NGO dedicated to a two-state solution; and Ayman Odeh, an Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset.
But answering these questions did not tempt the protesters who gathered outside the gates. These questions, it seemed, should not be answered. They should not even be asked. Instead, again, slogans – we should have learnt to fear slogans – and laughter. The laughter troubles me particularly: for people apparently agonised by war, they seem to be enjoying themselves.
“You look like pigs,” said one to the assembled Jews. “No one likes you. You lot reek.” “We are protesting against the Zionist entity which is well-known to be prolifically based in London,” said another, “and this is one of the venues that likes to host the Zionist entity and those who are complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians by the Israeli settler-colonial state.” “There is only one solution,” sang the rest. “Intifada revolution.” (The police stood by, but that is for another column.)
The second thing was a rebuke offered by David Miller, notorious on these pages, to non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in a series of posts on his X/Twitter page. It was designed, perhaps unconsciously, to mimic a trial.
“Exhibit C,” he typed, “on the problematic status of some of the progressive Jewish milieu.” He named, for instance, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.
Surely these are immaculate comrades? Chomsky, who considered Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank “much worse than apartheid?” Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry?
But in 2012, Miller reminds us, Finkelstein wrote this, on the two-state solution: “The flaw in the BDS movement is that it selectively upholds only Palestinian rights, and ignores Palestinian obligations. Under international law, Israel is a state. If you want to appeal to public opinion on the basis of international law, you can’t suddenly become an agnostic on the law when it comes to Israel.”
It seems that even non-Zionist Jews will be soon be required to leave the community of the good. The warnings from history are piling up.
So what’s the point of even trying to reinstitute a dead letter like Resolution 1701?
Here, though the Biden administration is unlikely to acknowledge it, Israel has actually provided the ray of hope. It’s possible that a ceasefire along status quo lines could now hold long enough for Hochstein to get a full night’s sleep. But that’s only because of Israel’s recent mop-up jobs in Lebanon and its strikes on Iran.
If—and it’s still a big if—the Lebanon-Israel border can be pacified, it will be for one reason and one reason only: deterrence.
The structure of the status quo in Israel’s north favors Hezbollah and Iran; the balance of military power favors Israel. Every so often, Israel is forced to use that military advantage because the UN and the international community allow Iran and Hezbollah to stay in position to start wars. The aim of all sides is to end those wars before they expand beyond south Lebanon—in other words, before Iran and Israel come into direct conflict.
Well, we’ve passed that particular line. And rather than drag the world into a great global conflagration, the ensuing skirmishes revealed the fact that Iran is wildly overmatched.
But deterrence isn’t only about getting in the enemy’s head. Israel destroyed all of the air-defense systems provided to Iran by Russia. IDF jets also crippled Tehran’s ballistic-missile development and reportedly some drone launch sites.
That means Iran cannot keep up this tit-for-tat even if it wanted to. Israel, however, could do this every day of the week and twice on Sunday, if it needed to.
Hezbollah is depleted and demoralized, and Iran is licking its own wounds. That’s why Amos Hochstein can ask everyone to go back to their corners.
The word for this is deterrence. It’s possible that Iran will still come out of its corner swinging despite its glass jaw and blurred vision. But the result of the recent conflict is that Iran’s next attacks would be necessarily weaker than the previous round, and Israel’s responses would be stronger.
No, UNIFIL isn’t going to disarm Hezbollah. Its peacekeeping forces aren’t capable of keeping the peace, and they are unlikely even to try. Hezbollah cannot be trusted to keep its end of an agreement. Iran does not seek peace and coexistence. US and European mediators are window dressing.
Israel’s display of force is the one and only factor. If there is quiet in the north, it’ll be because Israel reestablished deterrence, and anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy.
Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, is now calling for Israel to wrap up its major ground operations in Lebanon, with a longer-term goal of converting what he praised as significant battlefield successes into political achievements that will help consolidate recent gains.
“There’s a certain point where you hit the law of diminishing returns,” Dubowitz told Jewish Insider on Monday, noting that he had recently arrived at his conclusion while observing a growing number of Israeli soldiers who have been killed in Lebanon.
From a military standpoint, Israel “has maximized its gains,” he argued, warning that “further fighting without any sort of political strategy is likely to lead to more Israeli troop losses — and not necessarily to greater military advantage.”
“Now is the opportunity to undermine Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the ayatollahs in Iran, and through covert action and support for the people with continued military pressure, come up with more sustainable political achievements that are going to accomplish Israel’s overall strategic goals.”
His assessment marks something of a turning point in how pro-Israel foreign policy hawks have publicly reckoned with the ongoing turmoil in the region — as Israel has engaged in a widening, multifront war that has decimated Hamas, wiped out Hezbollah’s top leadership structure and exposed Iran’s military vulnerabilities.
But Dubowitz said his recent conversations with a range of Israeli government and security officials indicate that they agree with his push for a broader strategic pivot in the coming weeks or months.
“From the more cautious to the more aggressive, I think there was a sense of, ‘Yes, we need to start thinking about how to convert our impressive military achievements of the recent months into sort of sustainable political victories,” he told JI.
There seem to be several reasons for the Palestinians' reluctance to reach an agreement about a two-state solution, and a lasting end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
Any Palestinian leader who has recommended an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been denounced by his people as a traitor and killed. That outcome would seem quite a disincentive. As the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said, "Do you want me sitting up there having tea with Sadat?"
The donations that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have received since 1993 could have turned the West Bank into a thriving area, and Gaza into a "New Singapore" or "Dubai on the Mediterranean," however, the leaders evidently had other priorities for that cash.
One aim of Abbas seems to be to preserve his own wealth, estimated at $100 million, and the prosperity of his sons, who own the largest businesses in the Palestinian Authority. If donors keep throwing gigantic amounts of money at one -- especially unconditionally -- why not take it?
In a situation where every attempt to achieve peace turns into another bloody war-experiment, most Israelis have apparently concluded that they would be better off without such a "peace".
From the point of view of many Palestinian Arabs, and even some Americans, Jews can return to the other countries that wanted to kill them.
At present, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, praised as "The Churchill of the Middle East," appears determined to disable Hamas and Hezbollah politically and militarily so they will not be able to threaten the security of Israelis again.
Even with a supposed "ceasefire deal," Sinwar's successor will no doubt release the hostages as slowly as possible to allow more time for the Palestinians to rearm.
For a ceasefire, Hamas -- probably also including Qatar and Iran -- is asking for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, far from the smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. They are also asking for a "permanent ceasefire" -- meaning that they want the US administration and the international community to force Israel to stop fighting, but leave Hamas's leaders and terrorists free to rearm, regroup and ready to fight another day.
In 2023, Israel allowed extra work permits to the Gazans -- who then mapped out every house to attack, including "the names of the people, how many children they had and even which of them owned dogs."
At this point, whatever happens with a ceasefire or not, the region clearly does not seem ready for any kind of Palestinian state -- to say the least.
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of
the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
Kamala Harris didn’t actually call Trump a Nazi, but she
might as well have. Echoing allegations by disgruntled
Former White House Chief of Staff John
Kelly, she declared that Donald Trump wants a military that will be "loyal
to him personally" and "obey his orders even when he tells them to
break the law or abandon their oath to the constitution of the United
States."
Vice President Kamala Harris continued on, saying, "It
is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke
Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and
hundreds of thousands of Americans. All of this is further evidence for the
American people of who Donald Trump really is."
And there it is, Godwin’s
Law. The longer the election dragged on, the more inevitable it had been that
someone would bring in the Holocaust. Not in the sort of, “We must never forget
the Holocaust,” kind of way, but in the sort of, “He’s the author of the Final
Solution, Adolf Hitler himself,” kind of way.
Harris running mate Tim Walz was happy to run with it, remarking
that Trump’s alleged comment regarding Hitler’s generals “makes me sick as
hell.”
“Folks, the guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into
this madness — a former president of the United States and the candidate for
president of the United States says he wants generals like Adolf Hitler had,”
said Walz, who has lied
about his military service.
Walz said he was a retired command sergeant major, but he
wasn’t. He claimed he carried weapons “in war,” but never saw combat. In truth,
he skipped out on his battalion only months before they were deployed to Iraq.
J.D. Vance, among many others, condemned these falsehoods as “stolen valor.”
This is something to keep in mind when weighing the credibility of those Walz “orange
Hitler”-style slurs. But it gets worse with Walz. Much worse, in this Jewish
writer’s opinion.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice
presidential nominee, compared former President Trump’s Sunday rally at New
York’s Madison Square Garden in to a 1939 pro-Nazi event.
“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison
Square Garden,” Walz said at an event in Henderson, Nev.
“There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at
Madison Square Garden.”
An American Nazi Party held a rally at Madison
Square Garden in February 1939 that lured 20,000 supporters to the iconic New
York City landmark.
“And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there,” Walz said.
When Walz speaks, he draws a picture. We can see that pro-Hitler
rally in our minds. It hits you right in the kishkes.
Up next is Hillary Clinton. The former (failed) 2016 presidential
candidate picked off where Walz left off, continuing on with the same “Trump is
a Nazi” narrative, claiming that Trump with this rally was reenacting the
infamous Nazi rally, held in that very same space. “Trump [is] actually re-enacting the Madison Square Garden
rally in 1939,” said Clinton to CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.
“President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis,
fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the
kind of government that they were seeing in Germany,” said Former President
Clinton’s wife never-to-be-president Clinton.
"It is clear from John Kelly's words that Donald Trump
is someone who I quote 'certainly falls into the general definition of
fascist.' Who in fact, vowed to be a dictator on day one, and vowed to use the
military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendetta,'" said Clinton.
Harris, meanwhile, is not better than Walz or Clinton, only more boring—she doesn't believe her own rhetoric but is determined to get to the top
with her gleaming eyes and maniacal laugh. She’s not even original. In fact,
she’s a yawn. And frankly, unintelligent.
“I invite you to listen and go online to listen to John
Kelly … who has told us Donald Trump said, why — essentially, ‘Why aren’t my
generals like those of Hitler’s, like Hitler.'
“The American people
deserve to have a president who encourages healthy debate … and certainly not
comparing oneself in a clearly admiring way to Hitler.
“This is a serious, serious issue. And we know who he is. He
admires dictators.
“The American people deserve to have a president who
encourages healthy debate, works across the aisle, not afraid of good ideas
wherever they come from, but also maintains certain standards about how we
think about the role and the responsibility, and certainly not comparing
oneself in a clearly admiring way to Hitler.”
Asked if Trump were a fascist, Harris' bluffed right on through. “Yes,
I do,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
There was something in her smile. Something sly in it for that tiny split second.
Well, what else could Kamala Harris, famous for her word
salads, do to win at this point but smear her opponent? She wants to be
president, but has done so little to articulate her policies. Or rather, she’s
articulated many words that go good with Thousand Island dressing.
As November 5 draws nearer, Harris seems to have stopped even
trying to outline what it is she intends to do if elected president. Instead, she has begun this slow crescendo of hateful tropes, each day ranting and raving about
Donald Trump ever more vigorously, insistently and repeatedly telling us that
Trump is a very bad person.
There is a name for this. It’s called negative campaigning.
Whether or not smearing one’s opponent is an effective strategy is up for
debate, but it certainly seems the coward’s way out of articulating an actual
policy. Something Harris can’t and hasn’t done.
We have seen Kamala Harris a lot these past weeks, Tim Walz,
less so. I think they hide him. He’s scary. He has crazy eyes. And I did not
like the look of hatred that flashed on his face, that downturn of the mouth
when Walz was asked by a reporter about the hostages in Gaza—it was so quick I
had to watch the exchange a few times to confirm it. Then the mask came down
and Walz was Mister Friendly Guy once more—all smiley like he didn’t hear the
reporter’s question. But we all saw it. I saw it. I saw Mr. Evil Man rear his
ugly head for that little almost undetectable blip in time.
I dread the thought of Walz in a position of influence.
Kamala is a power-hungry puppet who will not be kind to Israel should she win,
but she is too stupid to craft or carry out policy, and that’s where others
come in.
Will Walz distinguish himself as an advisor? Will he have a
voice? More likely Walz is a signal to Israel-hating voters: Here is someone in
Kamala’s corner.
Someone who hates the Jews.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Social media users are intensifying their calls for Netflix to reinstate the Palestinian films, with some labeling the platform a "genocide supporter" and accusing it of "a blatant attempt to erase the history of Palestine." Alongside canceling subscriptions, many are voicing their outrage and condemning the platform's actions as an erasure of Palestinian narratives.
Anyone who uses Netflix knows that they remove videos all the time. And Netflix responded to the unhinged complaints:
“We launched this licensed collection of films in 2021 for three years. Those licenses have now expired. As always, we continue to invest in a wide variety of quality films and TV shows to meet our members’ needs, and celebrate voices from around the world,” said the platform in response to a query by Deadline.
But the haters are insisting that Netflix spend the money to reinstate the films on their platform, because, um, genocide or occupation or "erasing history" or something.
The thing is, if people were watching the films, Netflix almost certainly would - assuming the distributors wanted them to. Their letting the license expire without renewal tells us that these 19 films were not very popular on the platform.
The Israel haters want Netflix, a for-profit company, to spend its own money to make them feel better.
Interestingly, an Arab Haaretz writer/editor reviewed "Palestinian Stories" three years ago when they first were put on the platform. And she didn't like them because every one was simply anti-Israel propaganda which did not explore Palestinian identity outside that perspective.
What’s in these movies and short films? Everything. The occupation, arrests, imprisonment, torture, checkpoints, humiliation, airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, refugeeism, and much, much more.
Each of the eight films or shorts I watched is built on the same narrative of victimhood, with identical pacing, tone and cinematic language, as if they were all cloned.
...The occupier and their actions were the focal point in all of the films I watched. They all left the consequences of the occupation and the actions of the occupier that worked their way into the Palestinian psyche outside of the cinematic and political discourse. This cinema does not engage in a “Palestinianism” that was forged because of the occupation; it engages in a narrative tussle with the Israeli narrative.
....They are blindly faithful to the national narrative and, accordingly, offer up the clichéd, superficial content that places the Israeli occupier not only at the heart of the Palestinian narrative, but also exclusively at the heart of the Palestinian cinematic oeuvre.
If this is true, the world didn't lose much with Netflix removing the films. They were simply anti-Israel propaganda, not works of art exploring humanity through a Palestinian prism.
Which would explain the crazed reactions by the usual suspects: CodePink, CAIR, and so on.
Or maybe, just maybe, Palestinian identity really doesn't exist outside demonizing Israel?
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
That's about one in every 16,000 Americans, and more than double the previous years.
During the 12 months of the war in Gaza, 37 Gazans have died of malnutrition, according to Hamas.
That's one in every 56,000 Gazans.
The death rate from starvation in the US is more than triple that of Gaza.
France's death rate from starvation (as of 2020) is even worse than the US.
How many articles have you read about the risk of people starving to death in America or France?
How many about Somalia, Mali or Eritea, which really do have widespread starvation with thousands of deaths?
And how many have you read about "imminent famine" and "starvation" in Gaza?
No one says life in Gaza is easy, but don't pretend that the news media and UN spokespeople really care about starvation when they talk about Gaza. As usual, it is just a convenient club with which to bash Israel.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Literally everything Israel does to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza is harshly criticized. Evacuation orders, creating humanitarian zones, facilitating aid deliveries - they have all faced withering opposition.
And so has the latest idea floated, of hiring private security contractors to secure the delivery of aid to Gaza so it doesn't get stolen by Hamas. Criticism is mounting, as usual, without anyone coming up with a better idea that doesn't fortify Hamas.
Right now, hundreds of trucks filled with international aid are sitting in the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, waiting for the UN to pick them up. Over the past few days, according to COGAT, Israel has facilitated hundreds of trucks into Gaza while the UN typically retrieves less than half of them earmarked for UN agencies.
If the reason for not getting the aid to the people is security, why doesn't the UN itself hire private contractors for securing aid and personnel?
The UN regularly hires outside security contractors in other areas of the world. In Iraq and Afghanistan, these private contractors protected aid routes and aid warehouses. The UN has current contracts and relationships with the British-based Control Risks Group and G4S, for example.
A UAE-based group would seem to be ideal as a partner in Gaza. They know the culture, Israel would probably not object, and they have experience as an armed security service to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid.
The UN, and UNRWA specifically, never stop complaining that the security situation prevents them from providing the services Gazans need. But their actions seem to indicate that they prefer to complain and condemn Israel than to do any actions to protect Gazans, humanitarian services and that aid. (Their resolute opposition to allowing Gazans to flee to Egypt proves that.)
In this sense, the UN and Hamas share the same goal: to cynically use the suffering of Gaza civilians for their own anti-Israel purposes.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
A visibly Jewish man was slashed in the face in a random attack as he was walking on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning by an attacker who yelled hateful rhetoric before slashing him.
The Jewish community of Chicago urged the mayor to act as if he cared in the wake of the shooting of a Jewish man on Saturday. The mayor released a statement that didn't even mention that the victim was Jewish.
The Communist Student League a the University of Buffalo had written a letter last week with a list of demands, including that all "Zionists" be expelled from the school. Buffalo SUNY BDS, another unofficial group, agreed.
A West Palm Beach man is being charged with voter intimidation after he was caught on camera by a news crew allegedly yelling antisemitic slurs at a campaign worker at a polling site.
A Jewish family has sued a San Jose charter school, two Santa Clara County education organizations and the California Department of Education for what they say was a pattern of antisemitic bullying, harassment and public humiliation that their 13-year-old daughter experienced while at school in the wake of October 7. The girl is now going to a private Jewish school.
In the Cleveland area, Orange Village police arrested Ryan Kellogg, 37, on Sunday, for painting swastikas on a home near his home.
An Oneonta man has been sentenced to probation after being involved in a hate crime against a child of the Jewish faith.
Zachary Hoffman Kowatch, 23, was sentenced to five years of probation for Attempted Reckless Endangerment in the First Degree, a Class E Felony.
Kowatch previously admitted that on May 9, he swerved his vehicle at the teenager while he was riding his bike. He also yelled several antisemitic slurs as he passed the victim. Kowatch then turned his vehicle around, revved his engine, and drove back towards the victim. He made further antisemitic remarks as he drove off.
Hasan Piker, among the most-watched streamers on the platform Twitch, is coming under fire for anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric that has escalated in recent weeks.
In one recent stream, Piker declared that “it doesn’t matter if rapes f***ing happened on Oct. 7, like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much,” holding his fingers up in a pinching gesture. He had previously denied those atrocities.
Representatives of 10 Muslim groups in Denmark canceled a meeting about antisemitism in the Muslim community at the last minute. They wanted to include Islamophobia.
A Jewish woman living in Paris filed a complaint with the police after antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on the building where she lives.
This is the same building where Mireille Knoll was stabbed to death in a 2018 antisemitic attack.
Among others, the building was sprayed with red swastikas and red Magen Davids. Nancy, a resident of the 11th arrondissement (district), said that she has been a victim of antisemitic attacks in the last two months.
"Dirty Jewess on the 10th floor," reads one of the inscriptions. In addition, several inscriptions included death threats: "You will suffer.”
In London, a group cheerfully chanted for ethnically cleansing all Jews from Israel.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has launched legal action in the Federal Court against an Islamic preacher and religious centre over alleged anti-semitic statements.
If you include a couple of other stories I didn't include, that means that there is a news story about antisemitism pretty much every hour of every day.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
American foreign policy is always something of a hostage to the domestic politics of the moment. While this might be the unavoidable byproduct of democracy, it can greatly distort our understanding of the world and the coherence of strategic planning.
The Israel-Iran-Ukraine-Russia linedance provides a steady stream of examples, but never has it brought as much clarity to the mismatch between U.S. partisan politics and American grand strategy as it has in recent days. Republicans tend to favor Israel but not Ukraine, and Democrats, the reverse. Our enemies, of course, see it very differently.
Just before the weekend, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Russia has supplied the Houthis—the Iranian proxy in Yemen that has been shooting missiles at commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea—with “targeting data” to help sink ships, kill civilians, and sabotage the supply chain. “The data,” the Journal explains, “was passed through members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who were embedded with the Houthis in Yemen.”
That sentence is a handy organizational chart. The Houthis aren’t merely supported by Iran, the Houthis are Iran. And the Russia-Iran alliance has become so tight that Vladimir Putin is helping the Iranians retaliate against the U.S. and Israel for having the temerity to counter Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and, more specifically, for America’s modest support for Ukraine’s existence against Russia’s eliminationist war machine.
Russia wants to bleed Western resources in the Middle East because Moscow is bleeding resources in trying to destroy part of Europe. Russia is angry that it is bad at war, so it is making more war.
And birds without feathers flock together, so Moscow and Iran have expanded their partnership wherever possible. That includes Russia’s provision of air-defense systems to Iran and Iran’s provision of ballistic missiles to Russia.
Both of which took a literal hit over the weekend.
As the Times of London reports, one of Israel’s targets in its recent strikes included fuel mixers for missile production: “Early analysis of the impact of the strikes suggests that Iranian missile production has been badly affected, reducing Tehran’s ability to export weapons. Without the ability to mix fuel, Iran may be forced to appeal to China or other suppliers to help it restock, a process that could take many months.”
The Times saw the records for one Iranian missile delivery to Russia, in late August, about three weeks after Reuters reported that the two countries had signed a contract for Iran to provide several hundred to Putin’s forces. That could be delayed by as long as two years now.
And what of the air-defense systems provided by Russia to protect Iranian airspace? Gone. Israel destroyed one in April, and “on Saturday Israel systematically destroyed the remaining three S-300 batteries at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport and the Malad missile base.”
The fact that Iran might become dependent on China to rebuild its ballistic missile stock is another piece of the puzzle. China already buys most of Iran’s oil exports. Beijing has also been boosting Iran in the propaganda war, especially on social media where China has the largest user audience and a repressive censorship regime.
In Benjamin Ginsberg’s latest book, “The New American Anti-Semitism: The Left, The Right, and The Jews”, he urges Jews to “wake up” to the threat posed by left-wing antisemitism in the United States.
Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author, coauthor, or editor of 36 books.
The Jewish Light spoke to him in advance of his appearance at the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival at 1 p.m. Nov. 7. Some of the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the new American antisemitism you explore in your book?
“Most Jews are accustomed to right-wing antisemites, going back to the Nazis and the antisemitism of the right in Europe. What’s new for Americans – and I don’t think American Jews have quite wrapped their heads around this – is that the main antisemitic threat today comes from the left. We see thousands of students and some non-students screaming about Zionism in the streets of New York and Philadelphia and other cities. And I was horrified when I watched the testimony of the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT – let’s call them ‘The Three Stooges.’ They were not willing to say whether students running around screaming ‘death to the Jews’ are in violation of their campus speech code, and the reason for that is that they’re afraid of liberal forces on their campuses. I thought, ‘This is sort of the end of things as we know them.’ We are at a point in American history where people can be openly antisemitic, certainly on college campuses and some elements of the news media. It’s become possible once again – it hadn’t been for decades – to publicly criticize the Jews. So we need to rethink our position in the United States, and think about who our friends are and who our enemies are, before it’s too late.”
You argue that Jews in the U.S. should forge alliances with evangelical Christians and other Christian Zionists who vocally support Israel. Why are those alliances important?
“When I say to Jewish friends, ‘You should take seriously the Christian Zionists,’ they say, ‘Oh, no, they just want to convert us.’ I talked one couple into going to a little convention where you had Jewish leaders and Christian Zionist leaders. They came away amazed and said, ‘You know, these people do have some strange ideas, but basically they are incredibly supportive of Israel.’ And that’s right. We need people who support Israel; doctrinal differences we can argue about later. Liberal, well-educated Americans sneer at this, but it’s not to be sneered at: There are millions of Bible-believing Christians who view the creation of Israel – and the astonishing victory by Israel over its foes in the 1967 Israel-Arab war – as things that were predicted in the Bible. And they’ve put pressure on the U.S. government (to support Israel). I think Jews are always reluctant to shift their alliances, to realize that their friends of yesterday aren’t their friends today.”
Did you see Michelle Obama stump for Kamala Harris? She is really one angry woman. Her fiery appeal was to "y'all," and perhaps she mainly had black folk in mind. What do y'all think? What has Michelle got to be so angry about?
Obama? He's the former President who barely acknowledged his white mother and white grandparents who brought him up. In his first book, he focuses mainly on the black African father who abandoned him and never looked back. What kind of man does this? Did you ever notice this, ponder upon it? And why did he unleash Iran's evil power? Choose the mullahs to stabilize the Middle East?
Why do I keep doing it, reading the NYT? Am I a masochist? Do you read it too? Well, some of us have to keep up with the daily anti-Israel libels, the kind of lies that always, always, lead to violence and then to pogroms--and worse.
Yesterday, the NYT's described Israel's "foray" into Iran as "retaliatory" and as an example of "Israel's Shadow War." That's their lead front page story. Add to that an article that is sympathetic to Gazan cancer victims in Jordan who are facing psychological battles of displacement (five photos of them); two articles that are actually sympathetic to Iran (!!!), which praise the mullahs for their "muted response" and "restraint.
The largest state sponsor of global terrorism is described as a country that is "aware of its 'responsibilities for regional peace and security.'" Oh yes, there's another article about how outraged media groups are about the Israeli strikes that (inadvertently) killed journalists in Lebanon--Israel's actions are described as a "war crime," and as "deliberate aggression."
As usual, but Oh My God! Not a word about Iran's aggression and that of its' many terrorist proxies; no sympathetic photos of displaced Israelis, wounded Israelis, murdered Israelis. There are now 769 mostly very young soldiers and reservist fathers who were killed in battle; 891 civilians who've been murdered; 76 police officers and ISA agents who've also been murdered. There are 101 Israeli captives still being held hostage in Gaza. An offer of 100K for the release of each one, no questions asked, has led nowhere.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Introducing Rashid Rida on Zionism
-
Anyone who follows pro-'Palestine' Islamic propaganda will recognzie in the
excerpts below the source material for the virulent antisemitism,
exaggeratio...
Thought Police
-
On a Sunday morning, the Essex police showed up at the home of Telegraph
columnist Allison Pearson to interrogate her because she had tweeted a
photo of...
Swedes celebrate Jewish culture in Cairo
-
The Swedish Embassy in Cairo recently held an event advertising an
exhibition on Egyptian Jews at the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm. (With
thanks: Sos) T...
An open letter to the police and CPS
-
To the police and CPS. With reference to complaints made by Gabriel
Kanter-Webber about Rupert Nathan. I understand that the matter has now
been referred...
7 Biggest Dungeons In Elder Scrolls Games
-
Please verify your email address. Labyrinthian in Skyrim is a maze of
Nordic ruins with fiends to battle and treasures to find. Sundercliff Watch
in Oblivi...
One Choice: Fight to Win
-
Yesterday Israel preempted a potentially disastrous attack by Hezbollah on
the center of the country. Thirty minutes before launch time, our aircraft
destr...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
-
Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
-
With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
-
Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...