Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 12, 2025

01/12 Links: Today’s Palestinian advocates should be ashamed of themselves; British Islamic org. calls for boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Who Really Denied Statehood to the Palestinian People?

One of the most pervasive myths of the Palestinian protest movement is that Israel has denied statehood to the Palestinian people.

To the contrary, Israel agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007.

In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution that would have created a Palestinian state alongside a state for Jewish inhabitants.

Other stateless groups such as the Tibetans, the Kurds, and the Chechens have never even been offered statehood, let alone repeatedly turned it down.

It was the Palestinians themselves, through their anti-Jewish leadership, that has made the Palestinian people stateless.

The current anti-Israel protesters in the West are not calling for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. They just want to end Israel's existence.

It is not going to happen. Until the Palestinians recognize this reality, they will be denying themselves any possibility of statehood.

Today’s Palestinian advocates should be ashamed of themselves

Palestinians and their advocates should be embarrassed by their conduct, not rationalizing it to the world. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is one of the most corrupt governing bodies in the world. It is ripe with graft and nepotism. Unlike the freedom-loving countries that support it, the PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, haven’t held an election in 20 years.

The PA hasn’t abandoned its terrorist past. Its “pay-to-slay” program costs $400 million a year and incentivizes its people to commit terrorist acts. The program is so dastardly, the United State Congress passed the Taylor Force Act that made it illegal for the US to provide any aid to the PA as long as it kept up its pay to slay program.

Israel’s Defense and Security Forum wrote, “Fatah’s own terror group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, has also claimed that its fighters participated in October 7. Its spokesperson has released videos of terrorists abducting and taunting victims from Israel, wearing clearly recognizable yellow scarves associated with Fatah (as opposed to the green color associated with Hamas). The video says: First we “liberate the Gaza Strip,” then the rest of “Palestine” and “tomorrow [we will be] at the gates of Jerusalem.”

Instead of disavowing the attacks and demanding that Palestinians holding Israeli hostages release them, Hamas members and other Palestinian non-combatants have used Israeli hostages as pawns and bargaining chips to shame Israel and try to gain the release of other Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.

Kidnapping is one of the most despicable acts, together with rape and murder. All three acts have been utilized, justified, and praised by Palestinians as policy since October 7. What kind of a people justify raping young women and holding a baby hostage?

Palestinian society has a problem today. Unlike Arab Israelis, their people are corrupt, anti-freedom, and antisemitic. They never call for peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel. They call for an independent Palestinian state to replace it. They maintain that they are justified in all acts of resistance against Israel’s Jews, including, and especially, violence and terrorism.

Palestinian leadership today falls into one of two camps, Hamas, a terror organization conducting regular terrorism, or the PA, a corrupt repressive institution that promotes terrorism. Anyone siding with Palestinians today, instead of calling for Palestinian reform, joins a culture of corruption, antisemitism, and violence and should be ashamed of themselves.

Anyone promoting a two-state solution that omits the transformative changes which must take place in Palestinian society should be ashamed.

It is time for the world to stop emboldening the Palestinians and further entrenching them in their self-destructive behavior and policies that have impeded their success for over a century.

Change the Map of Gaza to Signal that Terrorism Doesn't Pay

Hamas sees the suffering of the Gazan people as a benefit, not a cost. Terrorists who locate their headquarters in hospitals, schools and kindergartens do so not only to protect themselves from possible attacks but also to exploit the inevitable killing of civilians for propaganda: More killing equals more world empathy.

In the Middle East, nothing hurts more than loss of territory. The worst outcome of a war meant to conquer Israel would be Israel's ending with more territory than when it began. The world demands that Israel withdraw to its original borders after every conflict it wins. Is it surprising that aggressors repeatedly try to destroy the Jewish state, knowing that they face little to no threat of loss of territory? This status quo must change.

There is nothing sacred about Gaza's borders, which were created in 1949 to mark the line of separation between Egypt and Israel. There is a clear security justification for shrinking Gaza's borders: Annexing a 1-mile perimeter around Gaza would create a buffer zone between Hamas-governed territory and the Israeli communities that Hamas brutally attacked on Oct. 7. The zone should also include a 3-mile stretch along the northern border of Gaza, an area Hamas converted into terrorist bases. Changing the map of Gaza would signal that terrorism doesn't pay, and could represent a significant advancement toward peace in the Middle East.

Displaying the truth about Hamas at bus shelters

For a couple of years, anti-Israel activists have been using bus shelters as a preferred venue to display anti-Israel messages.

This is hugely ironic, since bus stops and bus stations have been the site of numerous Palestinian terror attacks against Jews.

I quickly created an incomplete list of such attacks as a demonstration of what an honest bus shelter advertisement would look like.

The tweet has been seen over 16,000 times and "liked" 1,300 times.

I also made up a mock advertisement for buses themselves.

Some people have suggested that this be done for real.

Another suggestion was to simply print up stickers for people to place themselves at bus shelters where they live.

An ad at a bus shelter in a major city would cost about $2,000 a month. One an be certain that the ad would be defaced within a day in most cities, just as the "kidnapped" posters were.

Is this a worthwhile thing to do? I think it should be done by an organization that can properly publicize it, and I'd be happy to work with any that is interested. Let me know.

As far as stickers are concerned, I like the idea. The problem is that it is officially illegal to place stickers on bus shelters or public spaces like light poles. On the other hand, everyone ignores that law, and it should be fairly easy for me to create an online store to sell stickers. (I'd have to decide whether to print stickers that are easy to remove, which means the haters can get rid of them fast, or hard to remove, which means that the city workers have to hassle to remove them.)

The other advantage of stickers is that I can make lots of other designs, and in fact already have plenty of them in the memes I've created. (Here are a bunch from before 2014, most of which would still be fine.) It would be an easy way to counter the haters on campus.

So...what do you think?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I will donate $500 to @CAIRNational if they condemn this desecration of a mosque in Jenin

Every day, the Council of American-Islamic relations issues press releases condemning Israel for whatever made up crimes they read on Arab media.

Yet even though they claim to oppose terrorism, CAIR has not condemned Hamas or other Palestinian terror groups once through decades of horrific attacks on civilians.

Their press releases after October 7 were attempts to blame Israel for Israelis getting shot, stabbed, raped, burned and kidnapped.

This weekend, the IDF released a video from November of a mosque in Jenin that was used as a center for military activity. It has not been covered in mainstream media - as of this writing, the YouTube video has been viewed only a few dozen times.

The video shows clearly that the upper floor of the mosque was used as a lookout and firing position.

Terrorists set up areas of the mosque for shooting practice against their supposedly sacred walls.

Numerous bullet casings were on the floor. Slits were opened in the walls to shoot from. The soldiers found a cable to trigger an explosive device. By any definition, the mosque was a miliary position.

The IDF released information about two other mosques in Jenin that had been sources of gunfire and explosives by terror groups.

Today, the same Jenin terrorists are shooting not at the IDF but at the Palestinian Authority as it tries to re-assert control on the city that has been taken over by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Will CAIR condemn the terrorists for using a mosque for shooting?

I'm willing to bet $500 they will never mention it.

If CAIR condemns Palestinian terror groups turning mosques in Jenin into military bases, I will donate $500 to the terror supporting American organization.

My money has never been safer.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Telegram channel of the Gaza health ministry says, "499 martyrs were added to the cumulative statistics of martyrs, whose data was completed and approved by the judicial committee following up on the file of reports and missing persons....The death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 46,537 martyrs and 109,571 injuries since October 7, 2023."

Andrew Fox noted that the "judicial committee" is supposed to verify the people whose names were entered in the online form with incomplete data.

But as we've noted before, the health ministry keeps two sets of records. One is the ones whose names they have, and the other is the numbers seemingly made up by Hamas which, the health ministry now says, includes the deceased with incomplete records.

If the judiciary committee approved 499 names on the incomplete list, the number of total "martyrs" should not increase - only the number of the verified ones.

Yet the health ministry added the 499 to the higher number that already included the unverified victims, not the lower one. Which sure makes it look like they are double-counting them.

Maybe there is a valid explanation. But given what we've seen from the health ministry, which has consistently done everything they can to exaggerate the death count, this seems unlikely.

And no one knows anything about this "judicial committee" - is it part of the health ministry? Part of Hamas' judiciary? Who is on it? What is their methodology?

No one knows. And too few people care.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/11 Links: Sharansky: Why Can’t Israel’s Leader Visit Auschwitz?; Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’; Remembering Frank Sinatra's concert in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Why Can’t Israel’s Leader Visit Auschwitz?

What Israel is facing now is a contemporary version of the blood libel raised against Jews for centuries. The original libel accused Jews of using Christian blood at Passover as a reminder of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus at the Last Supper, which took place during the seder. Though Jewish moral law made murder a universal crime, and Jewish dietary law abominates the use of blood, the sinister inverting logic of antisemitism persuaded generations that Jews were guilty of a cannibalistic ritual.

The same Orwellian principle is behind the charge of genocide and crimes against humanity, which takes core Jewish values embedded in Western civilization, like the sanctity of human life, and accuses the Jewish state of collectively violating them. The story is then repeated so many times that it penetrates popular consciousness and legitimizes our persecution, even among the most highly educated segments of the population.

The original libel led to the prosecution, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of Jews over the centuries. For example, one of the most extensive trials for these alleged crimes, the Velizh affair, which took place over 12 years in nineteenth-century Russia, involved the arrests of over 40 people, four of whom died in prison. By the end, all of the accused had been exonerated. Yet when it came time to ratify a court judgment releasing them, Czar Nicholas I said that he regretted having to do so, since the fact that the same accusation had been made for hundreds of years meant that it must be true.

It is this assumption that has kept the libel alive. (As late as 1913, Mendel Beilis was put on trial for ritual murder in Kyiv.) I was shocked, for instance, when the man who would become my closest friend in the Soviet Gulag asked me, out of genuine curiosity to learn about the Pesach seder, what the ceremony was like when Jews used actual blood. He sincerely believed the allegation, despite being an educated man who was imprisoned for his enlightened Christian views.

While today’s version of the blood libel has not been repeated over the course of a millennium, it has been repeated countless times since the tragedy of October 7, 2023, when our enemies tried to launch an actual genocide against Israel. But just as in the Christian world every Jew knew that the original accusation was false, no matter what sanction it received from kings or clergy, today every Israeli on the street knows that the charges against us are untrue.

The current war is the longest and the most difficult that Israel has ever faced, and nearly everyone in the country has served on the front lines or has a family member, neighbor, or close friend who did. As a result, while we disagree deeply on many issues, including our attitudes toward the current government, we all know that there has not been an order to intentionally kill or starve innocent Palestinians. To be sure, there have been many civilian casualties, and every one of them is a tragedy. But these lives were taken not because the IDF targeted them; they were taken because Hamas used them as human shields.

Certainly there are experts and government officials, especially in the United States, who know and document the truth. But Israelis cannot afford to wait until the record is corrected, the fever breaks, and the historians catch up. Neither can countries who will themselves become targets of international courts that cover for dictators and illiberal regimes, not to mention those suffering in China, Iran, and myriad other countries whose crimes are ignored. Even in the Middle Ages, there were popes like Gregory X who did denounce the falsehood of the blood libel, though this was no guarantee of Jewish safety.

Knowing that the original blood libel was a lie, Jews historically had no choice but to continue their lives, preserving their values and spreading the light of justice to all the nations. This did not guarantee safety for the Jew. In the same way, Israelis today have no choice but to continue on our path, fighting for our right to exist as a Jewish democratic state and protecting the world against terrorism as we do.

But the rest of the free world does have a choice. While international law and institutions were intended to promote peace, they have been co-opted by those who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. If the words “never again” are to mean anything, then, they must mean rejecting this state of affairs. Anything less will return us to the same condition that the post-World War II international order was designed to prevent.

Biden Program Meant To 'Protect Jewish Institutions' Pays Out Six-Figure Grants to Mosques That Preach Anti-Semitic Hate

The Biden White House and Senate Democrats have touted their funding for an anti-terrorism initiative they say "has been critical to the security of Jewish institutions." But the program has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months to mosques whose clerics have preached anti-Semitic hate, cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, and been accused of raising money for terrorist groups.

The Department of Homeland Security has awarded $150,000 in grants since November to Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, and the Islamic Center of Bothell as part of its "Nonprofit Security Grant Program," according to federal records. The program gives taxpayer funds to nonprofits and religious groups deemed "at high risk of terrorist attack" to help enhance security.

President Joe Biden touted the program last year as an example of the administration’s "aggressive" actions to counter anti-Semitism and "protect Jewish institutions."

But the mosques have condoned the kinds of violence the grant program aims to prevent. In a sermon last month, Nader Taha, the imam of the Islamic Society of Akron & Kent, called the Oct. 7 attacks a "miracle" that "planted the seed of freedom in the heart of not just only the Muslim world, but the whole world."

"The faces of the children of Israel will be so humiliated," he said in the sermon reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Kent State University, where Taha works as a math lecturer, condemned Taha’s remarks as "anti-Semitic," saying that "references to the October 2023 massacre are abhorrent and stand in stark contrast to our institutional commitment to peaceful dialogue, as well as our core values of kindness and respect."

Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, a South Florida mosque led by Imam Izhar Khan, promotes numerous books on its website that preach violence against Jews and Christians. In 2011, Khan was indicted alongside his father and several brothers on charges that they funded the Pakistani Taliban, a terrorist group aligned with al Qaeda. According to prosecutors, the Khan family funneled money back to the terrorist group to "further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming" of Americans. A judge dismissed charges against Khan in 2013 after he served 20 months in prison, citing a lack of evidence. His father was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but he was released in 2019, shortly before his death.

The Islamic Center of Bothell, located outside Seattle, employs multiple preachers linked to violent rhetoric. Moosa Salie, the current imam of the mosque, served until last year as an official at South Africa’s Council of Muslim Theologians, which declared in September that "We are all Hamas."

Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’

Even before she first stepped foot on Columbia’s quads this past fall, Shoshana Aufzien was aware of antisemitism on campus. But she didn’t truly witness it until November 10, two months after she started studying at Barnard, Columbia’s sister school.

Aufzien was scrolling through Instagram when she spotted a post from Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and two other pro-Palestinian groups, promoting an event at a Columbia literary society, Alpha Delta Phi (ADP). The two-day event, on November 9 and 10, was entitled “Hind’s House,” in tribute to a 5-year-old Gazan girl, Hind Rijab, who died during Israel’s war against Hamas. A strict schedule was listed for the second day:

2:00 COMMUNITY COOKING BEGINS
2:30 PALESTINE 101 w/ @cujafra
4:00 PROTEST SKILLS TRAINING w/ @cuapartheiddivest
5:00 KNOW YOUR RIGHTS TRAINING w/ C*LUMBIA LEGAL
5:30 DEFENSE TRAINING
6:00 ON TECHNOGENOCIDE
6:30 DIRECT ACTION TRAINING

As a concerned Jewish student, Aufzien decided to go to the event to see what her peers were up to. What she saw, she said, shocked her. “The only way I can describe it,” she told me, “is a museum of terror.”

Aufzien said she usually wears a black skirt, a Star of David, or a hostage tag at campus protests to make clear she’s Jewish. But because Alpha Delta Phi is technically off campus and no campus police were present, she concealed her identity by wearing a Covid mask. As she walked into the foyer of the two-story ADP building, she noticed that the entire place had been converted into an exhibition, with more than 100 students and visitors staring at the displays.

On the first floor, she spotted posters pertaining to five members of Columbia’s Board of Trustees tacked to the wall, listing their various “crimes against the Palestinian people.” Their crimes included “sitting on the board of the NYPD Foundation” and “speaking at AIPAC,” a prominent pro-Israel political action committee.

Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’
Then Aufzien moved to the focal point of the room: a pool table covered with tools, such as wrenches, hammers, ropes, and wire cutters—all of which were used by anti-Israel protesters to break in to and occupy Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April. Pinned next to the hardware was a note that ordered visitors: “DO NOT GET YOUR FINGERPRINTS ON THESE!!”

The Hamilton Hall break-in was the culmination of one of the largest Columbia protests in history, which began on April 17 and mushroomed into a weeks-long encampment on the school’s main lawn. During the occupation of Hamilton Hall, protesters bashed in windows and doors and held multiple custodians hostage, leading to the arrests of 109 people in and around the building. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has since dropped the charges against the majority of students who took part; now just 15 of the original 46 charged still face criminal charges, including second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’
Next to the pliers and hammers, Aufzien observed another artifact from the occupation: red headbands stamped with the logo for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—a group that the State Department designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.

“I usually associate Columbia frats with binge-drinking and hazing—not the PFLP,” Aufzien told me.

Across the room, another table was lined with posters; one depicted a hang glider used by members of Hamas to drop into Israel and murder innocent civilians on October 7, 2023. Underneath, the message read: So on that day, the people of Gaza drifted into the sky like a host of colorful dragonflies.

01/10 Links Pt2: What the Auschwitz Controversy Revealed About the Enemies of America and Israel; A reminder to J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: What the Auschwitz Controversy Revealed About the Enemies of America and Israel

Arresting Netanyahu at Auschwitz would bring irrevocable humiliation on every Western democratic member state of the ICC. And perhaps that’s exactly what the ICC deserves, for it would be quickly and not-so-quietly swept into the dustbin of history, from which it emerged in the first place.

Which is not to say the ICC will get away scot-free. Because the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel’s conflict with Hamas, it is essentially interfering on behalf of enemy states and against the effort to save American hostages. So the Republican House has voted, appropriately, to sanction the court. “The bill instructs the president to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contributed to the court’s efforts to ‘investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person,’” reports the New York Times. “Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel.”

As the Times mentions, the effort to sanction the ICC died in the Democratic Senate. With Republicans back in the majority, the bill will likely pass the Senate and be signed into law by President-elect Trump after he takes office.

“This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe,” Florida Republican Rep. Brian Mast said on the House floor. “Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”

In an encouraging sign, 45 Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the bill. Meanwhile, the arguments from Democrats against the bill were more likely to help its passage than to hurt it. “Republicans want to sanction the ICC simply because they don’t want the rules to apply to everyone,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. “There is no international right to vengeance, and what we are seeing in Gaza is vengeance.”

This is pure gobbledygook. The “rules” of the ICC do not, in fact, apply to the United States, though McGovern is free to argue that the U.S. should join the ICC. The rules of international law and order do apply to the U.S. and our allies, and the ICC is in fact the party here ripping those rules to shreds. Additionally, even if McGovern sees the efforts to rescue American and Israeli hostages as “vengeance,” that is neither a crime nor, to be honest, an argument against the bill.

As for those who wanted Poland to arrest Netanyahu at Auschwitz, who wanted to have a grotesque spectacle with which to advance their own Holocaust inversion, they have revealed themselves to be nostalgic for a time when Auschwitz was more than a symbol.

Phyllis Chesler: The big lies on Israel lend legitimacy to ignoring Israel women’s rights

In its “Monthly Action Points (MAP) for the Security Council” on Jan. 6, the NGO spent 609 words discussing the situation in Haiti and 889 words on Israel/Palestine. They refer to the “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Israel’s “unlawful occupation of the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem” and insist that “international experts” (have credibly) described Israel’s actions as “genocide.” They mindlessly repeat Hamas’s completely misleading figures about the number of Gazans killed, wounded and displaced. They accuse Israel of having committed “constant violations of international humanitarian law.”

These women of peace offer nothing but anti-Israel propaganda. They do not include a single mention or word on the Oct. 7 pogrom or the 99 hostages Hamas continues to hold in Gaza, including several young women. There is nothing in the Working Group on Women, Peace and Security’s monthly report about the perennial attacks on Israeli civilians by Iran’s terrorist proxies, not a word about the displacement of Israelis from their homes or the number of Israelis killed or wounded in a war of self-defense. Not one word is included about the impact the attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis have had on women in Israel may they be Muslim, Christian, Druze, Bahai or Jewish, and, of course, there’s no mention of the need for services for traumatized Israelis, especially women and children.

Based upon their big lies, they call upon the U.N. Security Council, of which Algeria has the presidency, to “demand an immediate, full, and complete ceasefire … ensure immediate, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access into Gaza.” They want the Security Council to “prevent the implementation of legislation restricting the operations” of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

So who is behind this lovely group concerned about the fate of women in Haiti and Gaza that views itself as a “peacebuilder?” It is perhaps no surprise that the Working Group on Women, Peace and Security includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Center for Reproductive Rights and the Consortium on Gender Security and Human Rights, among others.

Funders of these groups include the left-leaning Tides Foundation, Compton Foundation and ministries within the governments of Norway, Sweden and Lichtenstein. They have all wasted their money. The United Nations has never prevented or prosecuted a single real genocide. They did nothing for the women in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, etc. The only thing that the United Nations has ever done successfully was to legitimize Jew-hatred. This little group both reflects and extends that particular agenda.

Jewish leaders warn of rising hate as France remembers supermarket victims

The ceremony took place outside the Hypercacher store at Porte de Vincennes where Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham, Yoav Hattab and François-Michel Saada died on 9 January 2015.

The attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, was killed when police stormed the building to free hostages. Coulibaly was linked to the Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo magazine two days earlier.

Relatives and politicians lit 10 candles on a specially constructed altar to remember the victims, including teachers Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, killed by extremists in 2020 and 2023.

Additional candles honoured victims of anti-Semitism in France, global terrorism and the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023.

Michel Gugenheim, the chief rabbi of Paris, read The Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for the dead. Rabbi Haïm Korsia and Christophe Le Sourt, of the conference of French bishops, followed with a prayer for the republic.

The 30-minute service was organised by the Crif, an umbrella group representing French Jewish institutions, and will be followed on Thursday night by a debate staged in tandem with Charlie Hebdo on freedom of expression, Islamism and anti-Semitism.

Ongoing cycle of anti-Semitism
Thursday's commemoration ceremony was marred after Stars of David and the word "Jew" were found tagged on buildings near the store and at a local synagogue.

“We’re commemorating Islamist terror attacks of extreme gravity,” said Elie Korchia, head of the Consistoire Central des Israelites de France – the religious organisation of French Jewry.

“But we see that through these tags, insults, through the daily anti-Semitic acts … that the cycle of anti-Semitism has not ended,” he told RFI.

Anti-Semitic acts rose by 192 percent in early 2023 compared to 2022. Crif documented just over 1,670 incidents throughout 2023. The French ministry fighting discrimination reported 1,500 attacks in November 2024 alone.

On this day in 2015, a tragic terrorist attack unfolded at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris, France. Armed with a submachine gun, an assault rifle and two pistols, Amedy Coulibaly, a jihadist affiliated with the Islamic State, stormed the supermarket in the Porte de… pic.twitter.com/S5NJRSLdhy
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) January 9, 2025

01/10 Links Pt1: Peace in Israel isn't possible until Palestinians stop paying terrorists to kill; UNRWA is not the firefighter. UNRWA is the arsonist.

From Ian:

2024: The Biden Administration’s wasted year

If Israel had listened to Biden and Harris, Hamas’ battalions would have survived and been rebuilt. Most of the hostages who have been rescued would not have been rescued. Yahya Sinwar and other October 7 masterminds would still be alive. Hezbollah would be just as powerful now as it was a year ago. Bashar al-Assad would still rule Syria. And the Ayatollahs would not be in decline in Iran. The world would be a worse and far more dangerous place.

President-Elect Donald Trump has warned Hamas that if the hostages are not released by the time of his inauguration in less than two weeks, there will be “hell to pay.” Those statements have created more hope that the end of the hostage crisis and the war itself may be close than everything that came out of the mouths of the Biden Administration in the entirety of 2024.

The idea that “daylight” between the US and Israel would magically lead to peace was always a fantasy that ignored reality. When Barack Obama came into office with that idea guiding his Middle East policies, he pretended that the 2005 Disengagement, which happened thanks to the good relationship between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, never existed. The result was that the Palestinian Authority refused to even pretend to negotiate and hardened its positions and no progress was made until Obama and his fantasies left the White House.

Blinken’s acknowledgement that this daylight between the US and Israel caused Hamas to refuse deals to release the hostages is too little, far too late. This was a lesson that should have been learned at least 15 years ago. Had the lesson been internalized even a year ago, the war might have ended and all the hostages might have been freed months ago.

Had the Biden Administration done the right thing and made the hostage and the defeat of Hamas its priority, had it stood up to the antisemites in America and the Democratic Party, had it demonstrated courage instead of cowardice, it could have had a foreign policy success to present to the American people in November. An administration that stood by its ally through thick and thin and played a constructive role in ending the conflict and bringing home the hostages might have gotten a few more thousand votes in many of the swing states, especially Michigan.

And even if Biden and Harris still would have lost in November, their legacies would be very different and much better if they had done the right thing and not wasted the entirety of 2024 prolonging the war and the suffering of the hostages.

John Spencer: Peace in Israel isn't possible until Palestinians stop paying terrorists to kill

An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, Ludmila Lipovsky, was brutally murdered last month in Israel while waiting for her daughter to take her to a doctor’s appointment. A 28-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank is accused of stabbing her to death.

This horrific act is yet another example of the violence incentivized by a multimillion dollar program known as “pay to slay," which is written into Palestinian law and governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Some view it as simply a system that rewards Palestinians for committing acts of terrorism against Jewish Israelis. In reality, it is a deeply ingrained economic structure and societal program in the West Bank and Gaza that incentivizes violence, thus undermining any chance of a sustainable peace deal.

The program provides monthly payments to Palestinians convicted of violent acts against Israelis and imprisoned for their crimes. Crucially, these payments are not extended to those convicted of non-terror-related crimes. The payments increase with the length of the prison sentence, which perversely rewards perpetrators of the worse crimes.

For example, as of 2017, a prisoner sentenced to up to three years receives $400 monthly, while someone sentenced to 10 to 15 years earns more than $1,500 monthly. During incarceration, the Palestinian Authority also pays the individual’s social security and pension fees. The payments to prisoners are adjusted to account for increases in the cost of living.

Upon release, the benefits continue. Released prisoners receive a lump-sum grant ranging from $1,500 to $25,000, depending on the duration of their imprisonment. Employment in government institutions is guaranteed, with job placements prioritized based on years spent in prison. Those who cannot secure jobs receive unemployment stipends − provided they served at least five years for men or two years for women.

Moreover, released prisoners enjoy free college education and lifelong health care. A male prisoner who has spent at least one year in an Israeli prison is exempt from tuition fees at Palestinian universities and professional training programs, as well as from health insurance payments.

If a terrorist is killed during an attack or by Israeli forces, their family is supported through the “martyrs” fund. Families receive monthly payments − spouses for life and children until they reach adulthood − ranging from $100 to $1,200.

Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer: Don’t blame Israel — it’s Hamas that has put every Gaza hospital in danger

Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization, operates without any regard to the norms of international law or value of human life, with a longstanding practice of systematically embedding their operations in hospitals, using civilians as human shields and building military tunnels underneath hospitals.

Fifteen months into the war initiated by Hamas, there is hardly a hospital or medical facility in Gaza the terror group has not turned into a military command center, including the Kamal Adwan Hospital. There, Israel has detained over 240 Hamas terrorists, including some disguised as patients, and found caches of weapons, including guns and explosives. Each of these acts is an undisputed violation of the law of armed conflict.

Among the suspects taken for questioning was the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, who is suspected of being a Hamas terrorist leader, in addition to approximately 15 terrorists who infiltrated Israel during the Oct. 7 Massacre. In these circumstances, during which Hamas turned Kamal Adwan Hospital into a terrorist staging ground, the hospital lost its protected status under international law and become a legitimate target for military operations.

Israel’s military objective is clear and defined: to eliminate the military capabilities of Hamas, which continues to use hospitals and other civilian areas in Gaza to plan and execute acts of terror against Israel, as well as the rescue of the remaining 100 hostages that the terror group is holding captive.

However, merely because Hamas has seized hospitals as its own personal launching pads and terrorist command centers does not provide carte blanche to conduct military operations. Nor does it mean that patients and staff inside the hospital immediately lose their civilian status. Under humanitarian law, Israel must still abide by fundamental rules such as distinction, proportionality and precaution. In each case, it has acted in accordance with its obligation.

Based on clear intelligence, Israel targeted a military objective used by Hamas terrorists, as evinced by the approximately 240 operatives arrested. There were hardly any civilian injuries in the operation, indicating that the expected incidental damage was not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the operation.

Israel also took ample precaution, including providing advanced warning, evacuating civilians and providing additional medical supplies to the hospital. Prior to the beginning of the targeted operation, as well as the process during, some 450 patients, as well as caregivers and medical personnel, were evacuated, while tens of thousands of liters of fuel, food and medical supplies for the essential functioning of the hospital were also delivered to Kamal Adwan during this period.

Quite simply, Israel has gone to unprecedented lengths to comply with its obligations pursuant to the law of armed conflict, whereas Hamas is doing everything possible in order to maximize casualties.

In the wake of the targeted counterterrorism operation at Kamal Adwan Hospital, the World Health Organization said that “The systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza is a death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”

To date, the World Health Organization has not condemned Hamas for the systematic use of hospitals in Gaza for military purposes. The global call to Hamas should be stop putting hospitals in danger. Many ignore that Hamas has systematically dismantled the health system in Gaza, with the acquiescence of an international community that refuses to call it out.

The World Health Organization also fails to acknowledge that Israel is trying to bolster the health system in Gaza, working with many groups to supply the five active hospitals in Northern Gaza and almost 20 field hospitals.

Those who truly care about the wellbeing of civilians in Gaza, and who are rightfully aghast at the scenes coming out of Kamal Adwan Hospital would be well advised to direct their outrage at Hamas, which continues to unconscionably and illegally turn hospitals into their personal control and command centers and severely risk the lives of innocent civilians.

In the 1990s, "Torah Codes" were a craze. The theory is that one could find hidden codes in the text of the Torah by skipping "n" letters. Three mathematicians wrote a paper in the journal Statistical Science that found that patterns that matched rabbis names were encoded in the same "spaces" as their birth and death dates, thousands of years before they were born.

One theory was that the minimum skip distance of a word is significant. So I wrote a program many years ago (in BASIC) to look through Genesis and try to find the minimum skip distances of the names of the patriarchs, not counting their names themselves (a skip distance of zero), to see where they would come out. Would they appear in the parts of Genesis that they were actual characters?

My program was slow and at the time finding even five letter words took a long time. Three letter words were all over the place with a skip distance of 1 so "Leah" and "Rachel" were sort of useless, let alone two letter names like "Noah."

But one of the best ones I found was Yaakov - Jacob - in this week's parasha.

Genesis 50:6:

וַיֹּ֖אמֶר פַּרְעֹ֑ה עֲלֵ֛ה וּקְבֹ֥ר אֶת־אָבִ֖יךָ כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הִשְׁבִּיעֶֽךָ׃

And Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you promise on oath.”

The smallest skip distance I could find for Yaakov in Genesis was 5, and it occurred in a verse that was about Yaakov but didn't mention his name!

The statistical paper was mostly debunked but I always felt it was useful. The idea that all the world's knowledge is contained in the Torah always had sounded nonsensical to me - how could all knowledge be in a finite text? The codes show that an infinite amount of information can indeed theoretically be encoded in a finite text. There is no reason to use equidistant skip distances - why not use digits of pi, or pairs or triplets of them, for skip distances? There is literally no end to what could be done with that method.

I'm not saying that the codes have validity. But they point to a way that information could be encoded, and that by itself is an interesting idea.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From The Jerusalem Post:

Israel's air force, in coordination with the United States and Britain, conducted airstrikes in Yemen targeting a Houthi power station and two ports used by the Iran-backed group, the military confirmed on Friday.

The targets included military infrastructure sites at Hezyaz power station, and military infrastructure in the Hodeidah and Ras Issa ports on the Western coast.

An informed source told The Jerusalem Post, that during US Central Command (CENTCOM) deputy commander Brad Cooper's most recent visit to Israel, it was discussed that Jerusalem and Washington would coordinate efforts in handling the Houthi threat.

So which targets were hit by Israel and which by the US and Britain?

According to the source, the "work" will be "split" between Israel and the coalition is relatively clear. The coalition will allegedly attack weapons facilities, control and command bases, and underground places, while Israel strikes the Houthi's economic facilities - which have military and civilian use such as ports, airports, power plants, etc.

Clearly, the British and Americans have no legal or moral issue with attacking dual-use civilian/military infrastructure. But they have political issues with it, concerned that domestic protesters will cause them problems if they hit a target that could be spun as civilian.

Israel is the designated bad cop. And when the protests happen, the allies can say, "No, it wasn't us - it was the Israelis."

This is Israel's role, whether they like it or not. The West tacitly approves Israel's actions but wants to keep public distance from them. And that allows them to throw Israel under the bus to save their own political careers if necessary.

The thinking is that the world hates Israel already so why not take advantage of it?

It is cynical and unfair. But it also allows Israel to do what the West doesn't have the cojones to do themselves.

I just hope that the Israelis are getting something concrete in return for playing that role.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Lancet just published an article claiming that the Gaza health ministry figures n deaths in Gaza is undercounted; as of the date of the analysis when it said there were 40,000 deaths the paper estimates over 64,000. Here is the introduction:

Accurate mortality estimates help quantify and memorialise the impact of war. We used multiple data sources to estimate deaths due to traumatic injury in the Gaza Strip between Oct 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024.

We used a three-list capture–recapture analysis using data from Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH) hospital lists, an MoH online survey, and social media obituaries. After imputing missing values, we fitted alternative generalised linear models to the three lists' overlap structure, with each model representing different possible dependencies among lists and including covariates predictive of the probability of being listed; we averaged the models to estimate the true number of deaths in the analysis period (Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024). Resulting annualised age-specific and sex-specific mortality rates were compared with mortality in 2022.

We estimated 64 260 deaths (95% CI 55 298–78 525) due to traumatic injury during the study period, suggesting the Palestinian MoH under-reported mortality by 41%.

The "capture-recapture" analysis that is the heart of the statistics-heavy paper works like this. The authors took three different lists of victims - the hospital records, the online survey, and those found on social media obituaries. Between the three they found very little overlap:

Only about 15% of people in hospital records appeared on other lists

About 33% of people in the survey appeared on other lists

About 54% of people in social media appeared on other lists

They used these overlap patterns to estimate how many deaths likely occurred but weren't captured on any list. A low overlap, they say, indicates that each list is a gross undercount of the total. Based on their analysis of the low overlap, they suggest that the three lists combined only captured about 45% of total deaths. This led to their estimate of about 64,260 total deaths during the study period, compared to the official count at the time of about 37,900 (which included unnamed people.)

The assumptions behind this methodology are wrong.

The reason that there is very little overlap between the hospital lists and survey lists is because the entire purpose of the survey was to supplement the hospital list. The survey list is designed to capture names not on the hospital lists. The health ministry Capture-recapture analysis is based on the assumption that the lists are independent, when in fact they are supposed to be exclusive - the Ministry of Health issues statistics based on both lists combined and would attempt to remove duplicates.

In this case, the capture-recapture analysis is not an appropriate methodology because the two dominant data sets are largely meant to be exclusive of each other, not representative samples of the total deaths.

The third list, from multiple social media sources like Instagram, is not a random sample of the deceased at all. It could be updated by anyone anywhere in the world. It is self-defining and impossible to verify. Using it as an input to the analysis is questionable at best. To give it the same weight as the other two sources for the purposes of statistical analysis and estimations based on low overlap is almost certainly a poor assumption.

There are other potential problems. The survey form does not distinguish between "martyrs" and "missing persons," and many of those assumed to be dead may in fact be missing - the ICRC has managed to reunite thousands of people thought to be missing.

Altogether, this is a case where the authors try to misdirect the reader with lots of statistical formulas but their basic assumptions that the statistics are based on are worthless to begin with.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

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When anti-Israel groups hijack causes and organizations, they will eventually destroy them

American Historical Association members attending the group’s annual conference voted 428 to 88 Sunday to approve a resolution opposing “scholasticide” in Gaza and the U.S. government’s funding of Israel’s war.

"Scholasicide" is one of those words made up specifically to come up with a new way to slander Israel. In this case, it was made up by a person who was a PLO official before Oslo who then became an academic at Oxford. It appears to have been used only to attack Israel.

There are a number of these "-cide" terms that are used virtually only against Israel, like "domicide," "urbicide," "memoricide," and "politicide." Their very existence is based on the lie that Israel intends to erase Palestinian existence in every possible dimension. Now, one of these terms whose very existence is based on antisemitism is enshrined by an association whose field should be dependent on accuracy and impartiality.

I just made a cartoon about how this dynamic works.

We've noted previously that Palestinians and their groupies love to hijack any cause just to turn it into a vehicle to attack Israel. Anti-racism, climate, oceans, women's rights, children's rights...the list goes on. Palestinians join world bodies tackling real problems just so they can make speeches and write papers about how Israel is the enemy of every social movement.

No doubt this irritates people who are dedicated to their causes. They are willing to tolerate it because they think that the alternative - being harassed forever - is not worth the hassle.

But one comment about the AHA resolution struck me as being true, and accurate for all of these causes.

“If this vote succeeds, it will destroy the A.H.A.,” Jeffrey Herf, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Maryland and one of five historians who spoke against the resolution on Sunday, told me. “At that point, public opinion and political actors outside the academy will say that the A.H.A. has become a political organization and they’ll completely lose trust in us. Why should we believe anything they have to say about slavery or the New Deal or anything else?”

Already the Middle East Studies Association lost several schools as affiliates when they were taken over by Israel haters. A number of others dropped their association with the American Anthropological Association after their own July 2023 anti-Israel resolution. Alternative academic groups are forming.

The single-minded obsession with Israel, which is today's flavor of antisemitism. doesn't just hurt Jews. It hurts everyone who adopts its stances.

Any good that is being done in academia, in the field of social justice, and in international forums to combat problems that transcend national boundaries is endangered by the Jew-haters who try to make every cause about Israel. Unfortunately, those fields and forums themselves are so filled with the modern antisemites that anyone pointing this out would be threatened with expulsion from the group.

The issue will come to a head in all these fields as each one must make a decision to prioritize their reasons for existing or their being taken over by a special interest group that happens to be obsessed with Jews.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/09 Links Pt2: Andrew Pessin: Israel Breathes. World Condemns; I accuse: An open letter to Pope Francis; Erin Molan: A defender of Israel’s legacy

From Ian:

‘A Palestinian state is like committing suicide’

For Israel to allow the creation of a Palestinian state would be tantamount to national suicide, Knesset member Ariel Kallner (Likud) told JNS on Thursday.

“And we are finished with committing suicide,” he added.

Kallner’s remarks came shortly after a poll found that for the first time in nearly 18 years, a majority of Israeli Jews oppose the two-state solution.

“I would have been surprised if the poll results were different after our experience with the Palestinian state in Gaza,” said Kallner. “Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza was a Palestinian state, and we know what the result was for southern Israel, the ensuing difficult war and the challenging times we now live in,” he said.

“We know 80% of the people living in the Palestinian pseudo-state in Judea and Samaria support Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. No one in the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority—who present themselves as moderate in contrast to Hamas—no one, not one official, condemned the massacre,” he added.

Of the 804 Jews polled in the “Swords of Iron Survey Results—December 2024” survey by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), 64% opposed the creation of a Palestinian state “under any condition,” compared to 23% who said they supported it “under certain conditions.” The remaining 13% said they didn’t know. Among the 205 Arabs polled, the distribution was 12%, 59% and 29% respectively.

Within the total sample of 1,009 Jewish and Arab respondents, 54% opposed the creation of any Palestinian state under any circumstances compared to 30% who supported it.

The lesson of Oct. 7
Religious Zionism Party MK Simcha Rothman, on the other hand, expressed surprise at the survey results.

“This number surprises me because it is way lower than what I have seen in other surveys, which show even higher objection to a Palestinian state,” he told JNS on Thursday. “The real number I believe is more like 70% or 80%, and those who support a Palestinian state are mostly Arabs in Israel,” he said.

“I think it was always the case, and definitely after Oct. 7 people understood what happens when you allow the supporters of terror to have a state near your borders,” he continued.

“As for the Arabs who support that state, they either don’t see it as a threat to our country, don’t understand the threat, or some of them support terror, sadly. We know that the elected representation of the Arab population in Israel is not condemning Hamas and is not condemning terror; some of them even openly support Hamas,” Rothman said.

Seth Mandel: Labour Pains

Therefore, you must be thinking, Hotovely was added to a long line of ambassadors whose expulsion is being debated by the governing Labour party, right? After all, by my count there are some 180 foreign diplomatic missions in London alone. Surely the seven-bedroom embassy/residence of North Korea in the leafy London suburbs is cause for some discomfort within the party of the UK left?

It is the position of the government of the United Kingdom that Ukraine exist, yes? So what of the two-state solution for Russia and Ukraine? Moscow’s ambassador appears to be in no danger of expulsion over it, even though Russia has recently expelled British diplomats.

Nor do the sensitive men of the Labour Party appear to be losing sleep over the presence of, and presumed disagreements with, ambassadors from Cuba or Zimbabwe or China. Or even the United States—with the second Trump administration on its way into office, there are bound to be disagreements over policy.

Who needs ambassadors anyway? They’re just trouble. Some of them don’t even recognize the state of Palestine, all because it doesn’t yet exist.

Speaking of Palestine, let’s check in with Husam Zomlot, Ramallah’s man in London. Zomlot’s definition of a two-state solution includes a Palestinian state next to Israel and the Palestinian “right of return” inside Israel—code for the destruction of the Jewish state. Technically, that is two states. But I don’t think two Palestinian states and no Jewish state is what the Brits mean.

Of course, maybe I’m wrong, and Labour is right now debating whether or not to make Zomlot persona non grata. But I wouldn’t bet on it. There is also the fact that when Zomlot was asked why he wouldn’t condemn Hamas terrorism after Oct. 7, he responded by suggesting that Hamas’s invasion and massacre was legitimate “self-defense.”

Is that sort of thing to Hamish Falconer’s tastes?

Perhaps a more useful question might be: Does former diplomat Hamish Falconer understand what diplomacy is? Does Britain?

There is a sense of entitlement in the tone of British discussion of Israel. All countries agree and disagree on various points of policy. But how dare the Jewish state have outspoken ambassadors! Labour increasingly believes it is entitled to the Israel it wants, not the Israel that Israel wants.

But that question was settled in 1948. And this privileged tone with which British officials discuss Israel is—well, it’s not to my tastes.

Nicole Lampert: Lessons in antisemitism from the NEU

The union is also a linchpin of the anti-Israel demonstrations taking place in our cities. Data taken from 41 major PSC protests between October 2023 and the end of November last year shows that NEU had 23 official speakers — nearly twice as many as the next union, the RMT. Other times they sponsor the demonstrations; for a February one in Leicester, the NEU’s symbol was next to extremist Islamist groups 5 Pillars and CAGE International.

“The NEU’s symbol was next to extremist Islamist groups 5 Pillars and CAGE International.”

Following the motion to circulate “educational material” on the conflict, Natasha says she is aware that one proposal is to “paint Israel as a colonialist endeavour” while Peter has been shown discussions about material which “seeks to say Jews have no history in the region”.

Last month, the NEU joined the call for Palestine Day of Action. In November 2023 this led to a series of school walkouts with children singing pro-Palestine songs. This year, the NEU told teachers in its North London branch: “Our plan is to wear red and green or keffiyehs, a fundraiser for Medical Aid for Palestine and a vigil in the park with floating lanterns.” Only a last-minute Government intervention — reminding teachers of the policy of the neutrality — scuppered some of the plans. Only a few teachers openly broke the rules. Never mind, the NEU is likely to figure at the heart of the next demonstration for Palestine later this month.

Faced with this sort of behaviour, a group of Jewish teachers met with Kebede last year to ask for a more balanced approach to the conflict. They are not holding out much hope; Kebede is a long-time admirer of Jeremy Corbyn who once claimed the former Labour leader’s critics were being offered “30 pieces of silver” — an ancient antisemitic trope. While he later apologised, the following year, at an anti-Israel rally, he issued a call to “globalise the intifada”. An NEU spokesperson later claimed that it was merely “an expression of solidarity and support for civic protests”.

How such “solidarity” manifests in the classroom is often anecdotal, but it certainly isn’t making schools safer. One parent at the Norwood School in South London told me about two incidents in which she felt children at the school were being subtly educated against Israel. Her 14-year-old son brought home teaching material which had been passed out in a “citizenship class” about refugees, which had an incorrect map of Israel and erroneously claimed that “since 1948 more than five million Palestinians have been displaced” — when the 1948 war displaced 700,000 Palestinians (the five million figure comes from the number of their descendants). At another school, in West London, a substitute teacher asked her eight-year-old primary school pupils to put their hands up if they were Jewish. When a couple put their hands up, the teacher told them: “I’m Free Palestine.”

For Jewish parents this is a difficult time. According to the CST, which monitors anti-Jewish hate crimes, instances of antisemitism affecting schools continue to rise, with 162 incidents in just the first half of last year. Sometimes anti-Jewish bullying has been so bad in schools that parents have felt forced to remove their children.

Meanwhile, as the NEU continues to focus on a war on the other side of the world, problems the union should be looking at barely get a look in. “I know I am not the only one who wonders what all of this obsession with Israel has got to do with a teaching union when we have plenty of problems at home,” says Peter. “We have a huge problem with teacher retention, with violence in schools against teachers, with crumbling schools — but all they want to talk about is Palestine.”

01/09 Links Pt1: ICC sanctions bill passes 243-140; Poland will not arrest Netanyahu at Auschwitz memorial; The UN's Secret War Against Israel

From Ian:

Poland says it will not arrest Netanyahu for ICC should he attend Auschwitz memorial

The Polish government said Thursday it will ensure that Israel’s highest representatives can participate freely and safely in the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp later this month after the country’s president asked for a guarantee Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not be arrested over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Netanyahu is currently not planning on attending the commemoration, an aide to the premier told The Times of Israel Thursday, after an aide for Polish President Andrzej Duda confirmed that he had asked Prime Minister Donald Tusk to guarantee Netanyahu’s safety.

Polish media reported last month that Netanyahu would avoid attending events commemorating the 1945 liberation of the Nazi camp in late January, fearing he could be arrested due to Poland’s commitment to respecting an International Criminal Court warrant issued for him over the war in Gaza.

Duda’s aide Malgorzata Paprocka confirmed Thursday that the president had sent a letter to Tusk “to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to participate in the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, should he express such a wish.”

Duda said “Every person from Israel, every official from that country, should be able to take part in this unique event,” Paprocka posted on X.

According to Bloomberg, which first reported on the Wednesday letter, Duda had asked for Netanyahu’s potential stay to be “unhindered” due to the events’ “absolutely exceptional circumstances.”

He called on the Polish government to “devise an adequate formula” to both guarantee Netanyahu isn’t arrested and ensure the country respects international law, according to the outlet, which said it had seen the letter.

Duda has frequently been at odds with the Polish government, suggesting it may not cooperate with his request, according to Bloomberg.

In vote of 243-140, ICC sanctions bill passes House, heads to Senate

The bill seeking sanctions against members of the International Criminal Court over its issuing of arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant passed 243-140 in the Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday, marking the body’s second vote in favor of the legislation.

The “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,” reintroduced this week by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), received overwhelming Republican support.

Roy attacked the International Criminal Court’s “unprecedented action of issuing arrest warrants” for the sitting prime minister and former defense minister of Israel.

“Let that sit in,” he said. “This is an entity, the International Criminal Court, that has no jurisdiction over the people of the United States. [The ICC] should have no authority over our people, no authority over the prime minister of Israel.”

Mast invokes 'America first'
Mast invoked the “America first” agenda and continually offered his tagline about the legislation, saying the US needs to “get in the way of those that are getting in our way.”

He said the bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe, that “when we make this law, do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. Don’t get in our way.

“You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcomed to American soil,” Mast said.

According to Mast, the ICC had time to “abandon the shameful effort” of issuing Netanyahu and Gallant’s arrest warrants but instead the court attempted to obstruct Israel’s right to defend itself, prolonging the war and preventing the release of American hostages.

“If you’re boosting the morale of Hamas, you are on the other team. And in November, the ICC’s Trial Chamber approved the arrest warrants,” Mast added. “We have to pass this bill today to prevent this travesty from moving any further and to deter any more illegitimate actions by this kangaroo court to halt or stall the military success of our allies trying to bring hostages home, both American and Israeli and others.”

Can ICC sanctions get to 60 votes in the Senate?

Legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court passed the House on Thursday with bipartisan support, but it remains unclear whether it can pick up sufficient Democratic backing in the Senate to meet the 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber.

Depending on when it comes up for a Senate vote, the legislation will likely need seven or eight Democrats’ votes to pass. There are early signals that some Democrats will back the bill, but none are offering concrete stances yet.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who voted for the bill as a House member last year, told Jewish Insider that she hadn’t given the issue any thought yet, but “I tend to vote consistently.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) told JI she supports sanctions in concept, but will want to review the specific bill that Republicans plan to bring forward.

“Sen. Rosen supports sanctioning the ICC in response to its biased targeting of Israel, and she hopes this can be done in a bipartisan way,” the spokesperson said. “She looks forward to reviewing the legislation that comes before the Senate.”

The bill has not yet been formally introduced in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has described the legislation as an early priority, but has not yet specified a concrete timeline for its advancement.

Four other Senate Democrats served in the House when the ICC sanctions bill initially came up for a vote last year. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) voted for the legislation but did not respond to a request for comment, Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) was not present, while Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) voted against it.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told JI last May that sanctions “should be a part of our conversation, 100%,” but did not respond to a request for comment on his plans for the vote.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told JI last year that he has “always had deep concerns about the ICC’s long-term, anti-Israel bias,” but a spokesperson declined to say how he might vote before a vote is officially announced.

Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Gary Peters (D-MI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) all told JI on Tuesday they hadn’t yet seen Republicans’ proposed legislation and would need to review it before saying how they might vote.

Blumenthal has condemned the ICC in the past for seeking arrest warrants against Israel but told JI in November that sanctions, while deserved, “may dignify the warrant more than it deserves.”