Tuesday, October 31, 2023
From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin: They back ‘Palestine’ because they hate Jews
Herzog on Islamists: Europe will be next
Jonathan Tobin: They back ‘Palestine’ because they hate Jews
The idea that there is something wrong with publicly exposing those who engage in antisemitism is bizarre, especially coming from those in the academy who have done their best to drive conservative critics of their toxic theories from the public square. Cancel culture is about demonizing and penalizing those who engage in normal political debate. Opposing it has never meant justifying and defending actual racism like those who are neo-Nazis or members of the Ku Klux Klan.Anatomy of a Blood Libel
That’s why the doxxing of Harvard students who support the destruction of Israel and who back Hamas terrorism isn’t wrong. Reasonable people would never excuse anyone who suggested lynching African-Americans. Yet that is what is being asked for by those who are cheering on or justifying the pogroms against Jews in Israel. Indeed, Harvard even seeks to protect their right to be hired at the country’s most prestigious law firms and corporations—something it would never do for those who call for the murder of any other minority.
In a saner era of American public life, those who rationalize Hamas slaughter as “decolonization,” as Attiah does, wouldn’t be editors at The Washington Post. They’d be driven to the margins of American society where they could advocate for whatever variant of antisemitism they like.
The same could be said of the Daily Wire’s Candace Owens, who described the pro-Hamas demonstration in London as proof that “people are not accepting the media narrative about what is happening in the Middle East despite the insistent rhetoric from government officials.” But what else did we expect from a defender of Kanye West’s antisemitism, whether she calls herself a conservative or not?
The ability of Harvard’s Jew-haters to go on to glittering careers, or the ability of Owens and Attiah to retain their influential perches, isn’t the real question. It’s whether society has now gone so far in accepting the demonization of Israel and Jews that there is no penalty attached to public expressions of Jew-hatred, whether they pose as sympathy for Palestinians or not.
What does matter is whether moral people are willing to go along with the pretense that demanding Israel’s eradication and the murder of its population is acceptable discourse. What is needed is for all people of goodwill—no matter where they sit on the political spectrum, no matter their faith or background—to denounce these vile ideas as hate speech. What’s more, they should demand that those who support this hatred be given the opprobrium and shunning that would be their fate if they were avowed Nazis, rather than merely those who support Hitler’s Islamist successors.
On Friday, the Associated Press published two pieces related to the blast. The first, quoting a French intelligence assessment, pointed to a “Palestinian rocket” as the cause, and the second, a full AP investigation of the available evidence, made a strong case for the failed rocket theory as well, even citing morning-after AP photos of the blast zone that showed “a small crater … in the hospital’s parking lot [that] appeared to be about a meter across, suggesting a device with a much smaller explosive payload than a bomb.” BBC published a quasi mea culpa for their initially hasty reporting, writing, “The devastating human cost of the explosion at the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza and the competing narratives put forward by Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian authorities, as to who was responsible, have made this a difficult and complex story to cover … However, as we have reported, based on the evidence available it isn’t possible to be definitive about what caused the blast. We will continue to analyse new information as it emerges.” And Canada’s public news outlet CBC wrote, “UN calls for investigation into Gaza hospital strike as France says Israel not responsible.”
By Saturday, Canada’s military had published the findings of their own inquiry, saying, “Analysis conducted independently by the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command indicates with a high degree of confidence that Israel did not strike the al-Ahli hospital on 17 October 2023,” adding their voice to the conclusion already reached by U.S. and French intelligence services. Al Jazeera and other outlets carried the Canadian conclusion in their reporting. The Wall Street Journal was also ready on Saturday to add their analysis to the mix, concluding that “Video Analysis Shows Gaza Hospital Hit by Failed Rocket Meant for Israel.”
And on Sunday, The New York Times took much of the air out of their initial reporting, writing, “Six days after Hamas accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds of people, the armed Palestinian group has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike, says it cannot find the munition that hit the site and has declined to provide detail to support its count of the casualties.”
This Monday, the Times editors issued an unusual note:
The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. However, the early versions of the coverage—and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels—relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.
But on Tuesday, in spite of the Italian foreign minister announcing definitively that Israel did not cause the blast, and that the death toll was more likely 50, not 500, and in spite of Vanity Fair publishing Slack messages from inside The New York Times which showed that some editors were concerned from the jump about publishing the claims presented by a single Palestinian source, NPR published a piece which reads, “experts are increasingly doubtful that the publicly available evidence will be enough to settle the question of who was behind the incident.”
Also on Tuesday, The New York Times published its own analysis of video footage of the suspected rocket, casting doubt on the already established analysis of some of its peers, claiming that the rocket in question was actually fired from Israel and would have detonated two miles from the hospital. They write:
The Times’s finding does not answer what actually did cause the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast, or who is responsible. The contention by Israeli and American intelligence agencies that a failed Palestinian rocket launch is to blame remains plausible. But the Times analysis does cast doubt on one of the most-publicized pieces of evidence that Israeli officials have used to make their case and complicates the straightforward narrative they have put forth.
And the beat goes on.
Herzog on Islamists: Europe will be next
Israel is at the forefront of a global clash of civilizations, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Tuesday.
“Hamas, Al Qaeda and Islamic State are all together in wishing to ban us all from the face of the earth,” he told a group of European Jewish leaders. “It starts with Israel, it starts with the Jews. It will never end there. Europe will be next. And that is why we are fighting a battle on behalf of the entire world.”
Herzog expressed serious concern about the significant rise in antisemitism in Europe and around the world in recent weeks. “This is a message that must be heard loud and clear,” he said. “When [anti-Israel protesters] say ‘from the river to the sea,’ they mean without any Jews.”
“When they demonstrate on campuses against Israel—they mean without Jews. When they criticize Israel fighting to defend its people, and fighting against the most brutal attack that humanity has seen in last generation—they mean no Jews,” he added.
“This is a fight not only against Israel. It is a fight against antisemites all over the world, and we are here to strengthen our brothers and sisters of Jewish communities all over the world, to show solidarity with them, because we are all in this together,” he said.
"This is a message that must be heard loud and clear. When they say 'from the river to the sea', they mean no Jews."
— Office of the President of Israel (@IsraelPresident) October 31, 2023
President of Israel @Isaac_Herzog speaks about the rising wave of antisemitism around the world: pic.twitter.com/JZklAMHN1L
