Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

The abject hypocrisy of UN Secretary General @AntonioGuterres

On Saturday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that the line of trucks that have not been able to enter Gaza is a "moral outrage."

Israel is not blocking the trucks. Logistics is. Bad road conditions, Hamas and bandits stealing aid at gunpoint, still dangerous conditions all contribute. But the trucks at the Rafah crossing have already been inspected by Israel; the IDF is not the holdup.

Guterres' hypocrisy can be seen in this cartoon I made:

He is standing on the very spot where Egypt built a huge wall specifically to block Gazans from fleeing to safety.

And he doesn't say a word about Egypt's immorality in refusing to help any of them

We know that thousands of Gazans want to go to Egypt - because thousands of them are trying to raise the money to bribe Egyptian officials in GoFundMe to allow them to cross "legally."

Then Guterres went to Jordan and tweeted this piece of pure hypocrisy:

Let us remind you of what King Abdullah said on October 17: “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.”

Jordan has taken in over 700,000 refugees in recent years, mostly from Syria, with large contingents from Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.

But they don't want anyone from Gaza. And Guterres is praising him for his "compassion" for those "fleeing upheaval!"

Guterres knows that Egypt and Jordan and other Arab countries could save lots of lives. He prefer that they stay in danger and blame Israel for its "immoral" stance in wanting to rid the world of a terror group that not only attacks Jews but even its own people.

The leaders of countries who explicitly do not want to save Palestinian lives are praised as being in the forefront of helping the Palestinians by sending them trucks filled with food that promptly gets stolen and then sold at a high profit by Hamas and other criminals.

Instead of acting as a moral voice urging them to allow the thousands of Gazans who are desperate to leave to take refuge in their countries - and the world would help support their housing, food and medical needs - Guterres is giving cover to their refusal to help. And complimenting them for it!

The only party he called immoral is the one trying to rid the world of Hamas. The ones who raped girls, who kidnapped children, who burned families alive, and who have promised to keep doing it again and again as long as they exist.

When thousands of Gazans who are begging to leave are shut out of every country, he is supporting their continued imprisonment. It isn't an "open air prison" built by Israel, but one built by supposed "friends" of Palestinians. In Egypt's case, it is a literal wall built just for Gazans in recent months, just to keep them out.

How much more evidence do you need that the world hates Israel more than it supports Palestinians?

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03/25 Links Pt2: The UN sows the seeds of its own demise; The Red-Right-Hand Apologists; US: Israel using weapons legally, not blocking Gaza aid

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Loser of the UN Resolution: Biden

The pauper’s diplomacy of the Biden administration was on display today as it facilitated the passing of a UN Security Council resolution heavily weighted against Israel.

Every minor concession to moral decency was rejected in favor of “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan.” Beggars can’t be choosers, explained Biden’s ambassador to the UN after abstaining from the vote, thus allowing the resolution to pass: “We did not agree with everything in the resolution. For that reason we were unfortunately not able to vote yes. However, as I’ve said before, we fully support some of the critical objectives in this non-binding resolution.”

Let’s be crystal clear about why this was a bad resolution.

Last week the U.S. put forth a version of the resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China. That version asked for Security Council backing for “diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.” [emphasis added]

If you don’t connect a long-lasting ceasefire to the release of the hostages, you are telling Hamas to walk away from the negotiations led by the U.S. to secure those two aims. After all, that same UN ambassador fumed at the time, “we should not move forward with any resolution that jeopardizes the ongoing negotiations.”

Russia’s deputy UN envoy disagreed, insisting that everyone should be comfortable with telling the hostages to rot: “At the coordination stage, almost all Security Council members expressed the view that the demand for an immediate ceasefire should not be conditional on the release of hostages or the condemnation of Hamas.”

Today, the Biden administration declared Russia to be correct. Let the hostages rot or else Joe Biden may lose a few thousand votes in Michigan.

As for the cynical use of “Ramadan” in the ceasefire, the Biden administration should be ashamed of itself for enabling it. The language implicitly portrays Israel’s counteroffensive as a war of religious persecution, or at the very least contempt. That alone will inflame the violent resistance to the mere survival of the Jewish nation. Was there a Hanukkah resolution passed by the UNSC that demanded the release of hostages? Yesterday was Purim; the holiday came and went without a UNSC demand for Hamas to at least return the children it is holding. Next month is the holiday of Passover, in which we recount our ancestors’ prolonged suffering while they were held against their will. How does the godforsaken nest of cretinous trolls at Turtle Bay plan to honor that one?

Intl. law expert: Biden team's moral backbone collapsed

Prof. Anne Bayefsky, president of the Human Rights Voices NGO and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva Monday about the US government's decision to abstain rather than use its veto against a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during the month of Ramadan.

"The failure of the Biden administration to veto this resolution is a shocking redefinition of American priorities: mollifying Iran and its terrorist partners is on the ascent while supporting Israel in its existential battle against terror is plummeting," Prof. Bayefsky said.

She noted, "Last week the United States "demanded" the UN Security Council finally condemn Hamas for the October 7th atrocities - which the Council has never done. The Arab group of states, the Russians and Chinese said no. Just forty-eight hours later, the moral backbone of the Biden team collapsed. The United States allowed the adoption of the third Council resolution since October 7th that fails to condemn its perpetrators."

"Moreover, in her statement before the Council American Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield said Hamas should achieve a ceasefire - in effect saving the terror organization and its plans for more October 7's - with the release of one hostage! In her words: “A ceasefire can begin immediately with the release of the first hostage.” American hostages have been abandoned in Hamas hell holes, by their own government. And U.S. credibility and honor has taken a tremendous hit - to the detriment of Israel, the Jewish people and America," Prof. Bayefsky concluded.

David Singer: The UN sows the seeds of its own demise

Guterres has been responsible for filing only documents from 1947 – not from 1917 - with the International Court of Justice in relation to the UN General Assembly seeking the Court’s advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The Court’s opinion will be based only on those documents lodged by Guterres– which will exclude the Court considering the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and the 1936 Peel Commission.

Guterres has been the UN front man – supported by UNESCO head Tor Wennesland - pushing for the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Jordan as called for in Security Council Resolution 2334 adopted on 23 December 2016 – when Obama refrained from vetoing it - that misleadingly claims Jews have no legal right to live anywhere west of the Jordan River. Rescinding Resolution 2334 remains an imperative to rectifying this anti-Jewish canard.

Guterres and Wennesland have refused for the last 18 months to bring before the Security Council for its consideration an alternative solution emanating from Saudi Arabia - authored by an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution published in Al Arabiya News on 8 June 2022. Their extraordinary decision ensures the 100 years-old Jewish-Arab conflict will continue – not end.

Emboldened by these clearly anti-Israel UN decisions – increasingly strident Moslems have caused Jewish communities worldwide to become greatly concerned for their own safety as they foment demonstrations around the globe calling for Palestine from the River to the Sea to be free of Jews – supported by lawyers from Australia to artists in the USA signing letters calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza War.

Under Guterres’s leadership the UN has become the epicentre for fostering anti-Israel hatred and Jew-hatred.

The UN has lost its moral compass and is sowing the seeds for its own demise.

Not only civilians: Taking soldiers hostage is also a war crime

Today, the US did not veto a resolution in the UN Security Council that called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The text says,

1. Demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs, and further demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain;

Israel's UN ambassador Gilad Erda reacted:

Gilad Erdan, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Israel, questioned why the Security Council “discriminates” among victims, recalling that it condemned the deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow on Friday, but failed to condemn the Nova music festival massacre of 7 October.

“Civilians, no matter where they live, deserve to enjoy music in safety and security, and the Security Council should have the moral clarity to condemn such acts of terror equally, without discrimination,” he said.

“Sadly, today as well, this Council refused to condemn the 7 October massacre; this is a disgrace,” he added.

Mr. Erdan further noted that for the past 18 years, Hamas initiated ceaseless attacks against Israelis, launching "thousands and thousands of indiscriminate rockets and missiles against civilians”.

He added that while the resolution failed to condemn Hamas, it did “state something that should have been the driving moral force”.

“This resolution denounces the taking of hostages, recalling that it is in violation of international law,” he said, underscoring that taking innocent civilians hostage is a war crime.

“When it comes to bringing the hostages home, the Security Council must not settle for words alone, but take action, real action,” he said.

He's right about the UN refusal to condemn Hamas, which is has never done since October 7.

Although I don't have his exact words, when he says that taking innocent civilians hostage is a war crime he is only saying part of the story. Any hostage taking, inclusing soldiers, is a war crime.

From the ICRC International Humanitarian Law Database:

Rule 96. The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits the taking of hostages. It is also prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention and is considered a grave breach thereof.

...
The International Convention against the Taking of Hostages defines the offence as the seizure or detention of a person (the hostage), combined with threatening to kill, to injure or to continue to detain the hostage, in order to compel a third party to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage. The Elements of Crimes for the International Criminal Court uses the same definition but adds that the required behaviour of the third party could be a condition not only for the release of the hostage but also for the safety of the hostage. It is the specific intent that characterizes hostage-taking and distinguishes it from the deprivation of someone’s liberty as an administrative or judicial measure.

Although the prohibition of hostage-taking is specified in the Fourth Geneva Convention and is typically associated with the holding of civilians as hostages, there is no indication that the offence is limited to taking civilians hostage. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages do not limit the offence to the taking of civilians, but apply it to the taking of any person. Indeed, in the Elements of Crimes for the International Criminal Court, the definition applies to the taking of any person protected by the Geneva Conventions.

This is not a prisoner of war situation. This is hostage taking, specifically and explicitly done to compel Israel to act in certain ways - releasing prisoners and stopping military action.

That is a war crime, and appears to be a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Obviously, everyone wants to see the civilian hostages released, but the forcible taking of soldiers hostage is no less heinous. Israel's public position should not distinguish between the two.

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Who desecrated this Islamic shrine? Muslims, of course!

Palestine Today reports:

This Sunday morning, Zionist settlers stormed Islamic shrines in the town of Kafl Haris, north of the city of Salfit, in the north of the occupied West Bank, under the protection of the " Israeli " occupation forces.

Local sources reported that dozens of settlers stormed the Islamic shrines in the center of Kifl Haris, and desecrated them, by performing Talmudic rituals, under heavy guard by the occupation army .

The "Islamic shrines" the "settlers desecrated" are the tombs of Joshua and Caleb. The Muslims admit one of the tombs is that of Joshua, as it is "known to Muslims as the Maqam of Yusha' ibn Nun (مقام يوشع بن نون; Shrine of Joshua, son of Nun)."

The Jews who visit only...visit. But who desecrates it?

In December, Muslims painted graffiti on their supposedly holy site, including "Death to the Jews" (in Hebrew), names of terrorists, support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other phrases.

Jews restored the tombs.

Apparently, scrawling "Death to the Jews" isn't desecration of a Muslim holy place. It is consecration.

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03/25 Links Pt1: What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?; UNSC res. demanding immediate ceasefire in Gaza; Hamas, AJ admit: Story of IDF rapes in Gaza hospital fabricated

From Ian:

David Brooks: What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?

If the current Israeli military approach is inhumane, what's the alternative? Is there a better military strategy Israel can use to defeat Hamas without a civilian blood bath? In recent weeks, I've been talking with security and urban warfare experts in search of such ideas.

This war is like few others because the crucial theater is underground. The tunnel network is where Hamas lives, holds hostages, stores weapons, builds missiles and moves from place to place. Building these tunnels cost the Gazan people about a billion dollars. Hamas built many of its most important military and strategic facilities under hospitals and schools. Its server farm was built under the offices of the UN relief agency in Gaza City.

As Barry Posen, professor at the security studies program at MIT, has written, Hamas' strategy is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas' survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.

John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, told me that Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel's measures to warn civilians when and where it is about to begin operations "have prolonged the war, to be honest."

As the leaders of Hamas watch Washington grow more critical of Jerusalem, they must know their strategy is working. Yet if this war ends with a large chunk of Hamas in place, it would be a long-term disaster for the region. Victorious, Hamas would dominate whatever government was formed to govern Gaza. Hamas would rebuild its military to continue its efforts to exterminate the Jewish state, delivering on its promise to launch more and more attacks like that of Oct. 7.

Moreover, if Hamas survives this war intact, it would be harder for the global community to invest in rebuilding Gaza. It would be impossible to begin a peace process. So I'm left with the tragic conclusion that there is no magical alternative military strategy.

The lack of viable alternatives leaves me to conclude that Israel must ultimately confront Hamas leaders and forces in Rafah rather than leave it as a Hamas beachhead. Absent some new alternative strategy, Biden is wrong to stop Israel from confronting the Hamas threat in southern Gaza.

Biden and Harris throw Israel under the Gaza bus

President Joe Biden has prioritised a ceasefire over and above the safe return of the 134 hostages — including five Americans — held by Hamas.

The implication of this is that the Israeli military should lay down their guns and let Hamas continue torturing and raping the hostages who will be left with no hope of rescue.

Of course, he didn’t announce this shift in policy from the Oval Office. It was slipped out in the text of last week’s US resolution at the UN that was designed to fail, but also to telegraph his callous change in position.

A month ago the US floated a draft resolution that gave equal importance to a ceasefire and release of hostages, tying the two together tightly.

Biden dropped that direct link in the final resolution last week. It stated that a ceasefire is imperative for the protection of civilians. But merely expressed support for diplomacy “to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”

There we have it. Biden has again, as in Afghanistan, given up on Americans and America’s allies.

The resolution was vetoed by Russia and China, as the US knew it would be, but its insidious message was received loud and clear.

By forcing a ceasefire, Biden will allow Hamas to claim victory and force Israel to remove its boot from the neck of the terror group, the only thing pressuring them to release the hostages. Without it, all hope for their safe return is surely lost.

Even talk of a ceasefire may embolden Hamas to hang on and reject a hostage deal, anticipating that the US will eventually force Israel to stop its military campaign.

Jake Wallis Simons: Feeble Britain is now letting Hamas win the propaganda war

We have entered a topsy-turvy universe. International institutions are used as weapons of Hamas, while those fighting for freedom and democracy are smeared as the agents of genocide.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has vowed to halt arms sales if Israel attacked Rafah. Given their small amount, it is hard to see what this is supposed to achieve.

But showing that you care about the Palestinians is apparently more important than destroying jihadism.

While Israel has achieved a civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio that is likely lower than in any comparable theater of war, Hamas has convinced the world that it is acting out of wanton bloodlust.

In the broadcast media, footage of suffering civilians is ubiquitous, but have you ever seen a picture of the thousands of dead or wounded terrorists?

Hamas censors this material. No Western media outlet makes this clear to its viewers.

This is a deceit that turns public opinion against Israel, furthering the aims of Hamas.

In a sane universe, the democratic world would pull behind Israel until the war is won. It would express its differences behind closed doors, working together to limit civilian casualties while freeing the hostages and beating the jihadis.

This would reassure Saudi Arabia that the West stands by its friends, encouraging it to normalize relations with Israel.

Instead, the international community is mobilizing to block an Israeli victory, and at the same time it is blocking peace.

Deep underground, the leaders of Hamas must be licking their lips.

In a New York Times article about injured children in Gaza, photojournalist Nariman El-Mofty writes, "Health officials in the territory say that more than 31,000 Gazans have been killed since the war began on Oct. 7, in response to the attack that Hamas led against Israel. "

The war didn't begin with the Hamas attack, according to the New York Times reporters and editors It began when Israel decided to respond to the murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Hamas doesn't say this. They call the entire war Al Aqsa Flood. Al Qassam Brigades head Mohammed Deif announced the war at 8:00 AM on October 7, calling on all Palestinians to grab weapons and shoot at Israelis.

Hamas gladly admits they started the war.

But to the West, wars begin only when Israel responds. Israel is not expected to respond to being attacked; when they do, they started it.

This also happened in 2008, when Hamas announced Operation Oil Slick (or "Oil Stain") and shot hundreds of rockets into Israel. Israel only responded days later, with Operation Cast Lead, although Hamas still called the war "Operation Oil Slick" for a bit more time afterwards.

Using this terminology creates a false framework, that Israel is always the aggressor and Palestinians are always victims. Palestinian attacks are regarded as low-level noise that should be ignored by Israel, and Israel's responses are considered brand new aggression with little relationship to the events that preceded it.

It is only a "cycle of violence" when Arabs attack Jews, because there is always a valid grievance to justify Arabs murdering Jews. Israeli responses aren't part of a cycle but a new Israeli attack for no valid reason.

(h/t Irene)

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David Brooks in the New York Times looks at the real military situation in Gaza, asking, "What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?"

He calls out what every military expert knows: Israel is doing the best job possible.

Brooks writes basic truths that are rarely seen in the media: "Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents."

He doesn't say this, but this is part of Hamas' strategy of lying - claiming that Israel is sexually abusing patients in Shifa Hospital, for example. Since so few reporters call them out on their lies, they can make up more lurid ones.

So what alternatives does Israel have to an invasion of Rafah? Brooks lists several, and none of them can work. Limiting engagement is more likely to leave power vacuums; assassinations of Hamas leaders are difficult and when done on foreign territory like Turkey they have serious political risks, a counterinsurgency strategy only works then there is an alternative government and infrastructure Israel can work with, and the fourth is absurd:

A fourth alternative is that Israel should just stop. It should settle for what it has achieved and not finish the job by invading Rafah and the southern areas of Gaza, or it should send in just small strike teams.

This is now the official Biden position. The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has argued that Israel can destroy Hamas in Gaza without a large invasion but “by other means” (which he did not elaborate on). ...The I.D.F. estimates that there are 5,000 to 8,000 Hamas fighters in Rafah. Defeating an army that size would take thousands of airstrikes and raids. If you try to shrink the incursion, the math just doesn’t add up. As an Israeli war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, reportedly told U.S. officials, “Finishing the war without demilitarizing Rafah is like sending in firefighters to put out 80 percent of a fire.”

Hamas' defeat is not negotiable, and Brooks goes into detail why. Hamas' survival would be a worldwide disaster.

Brooks does discuss the humanitarian side of the equation:

Israel is failing to lay the groundwork for some sort of better Palestinian future — to its own detriment. The security experts I spoke with acknowledge that providing humanitarian aid will be hard. As Cohen told me: “If the Israeli military takes over distributing humanitarian aid to Gaza, they will likely lose soldiers in the process. And so Israelis are asking why should their boys die providing aid to someone who wants to kill them. "

This is true. Whatever Israel proposes, though, will be regarded as a step in a new "occupation" of Gaza or as putting Palestinians in detention camps.

Brooks' article, as good as it is, does not mention two important options.

One is that Egypt needs to be a partner in allowing Gazans to go there temporarily while Israel cleans out Rafah. Egypt's response to this humanitarian crisis by building higher walls is fully accepted by the international community and this is hypocrisy of the highest order. Aid can get to the Sinai easily. Countless lives can be saved.

And the other point is my plan to turn Gaza into a new emirate of the UAE. Professor Andrew Pessin recently summarized my plan. It solves every problem Brooks and others postulate. It would also mean that any potential future Palestinian state would only be on the West Bank, but that is a feature, not a bug: any alternative cuts Israel in half. Gazans can decide whether they prefer to live under corrupt Palestinian rule or as full citizens of the UAE.

Would the UAE sign on? They are the only Arab nation showing genuine concern for Gaza civilians. They can gain a great deal by having a presence on the Mediterranean and access to gas fields there. And they can really turn Gaza into the Singapore people rhapsodized about in the 2000s.

This way there is no "occupation" - Arabs live under Arab rule, as they did under Jordanian and Egyptian rule without much complaint between 1948-1967. And in this case their rulers would actually care about them.

It would be difficult, but less difficult than any alternative day-after scenario anyone has come up with. So isn't it worth putting effort in now, rather than waiting for further disasters?

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Saudi writer M . Talal Al-Qashqari has been writing insane Jew-hatred in Al Madinah, a Saudi newspaper.

Last week he wrote:

If you see Israelis wearing black pants, a white shirt without a tie, and a black hat, combing their beards in a disgusting way, and braiding part of their hair into two long side braids, know that you are in the presence of the Haredi Jews, who are the ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Imagine...they consider themselves pious despite all the actions that the Israelis have done that lack piety towards the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and even humanity as a whole!

They consider themselves spiritual guides to the Israelis, and in this they are similar to the banned Brotherhood groups. They devote themselves to learning and teaching the ancient Torah, distorted of course, and are not good at anything else except spitting on every Muslim or Christian living in occupied Palestine while they meet them in the street, while they respect the extremist evangelical Christians. Those who live in the West for fear of losing Western support for Israel!

They represent 13% of the population of Israel, which is a large percentage, and they can be classified as ISIS Jews.

Someone might think that the Haredim are not dangerous, as the opposite is true. Their leaders state without hint or ambiguity that killing Palestinian mothers and their children is a sacred duty because they are the breeding ground for children who will turn into fighters when they grow up, and whoever kills a Palestinian or Muslim woman with her child, even if it is a fetus in her womb, or an infant, so they have no doubt that he served and upheld the religion of Moses, peace be upon him, as they claim!

These are the pious people of Israel, so what about the common people?!

This week:

[The Talmud teaches] that God created the Gentiles to serve the Jews who are the masters and the others are slaves...Before the war, Israel employed thousands of Palestinians from Gaza in menial and hard work, on the condition that they do not spend the night in its cities and settlements, and that they come there every morning and leave in the evening!

Also from this heritage is the permissibility of Jews killing Gentiles, including children, even if they were fetuses in their mothers’ wombs or breastfed infants, raping their women, burning their crops, destroying their homes, and depriving them of water and food. This is exactly what they did to the people of Gaza without mercy. They believe that they will be rewarded!

And last but not least, every land that the Jews have stepped on was gifted to them by God, and if they needed human organs for their patients, such as livers or kidneys, and then they found them in the bodies of Gentiles, there is no blame on them for transferring the organs to them by force or euthanasia, and how safe the Gentiles are from the racism and brutality of these occupiers, the expanders, and the greedy!

I might have missed it, but usually this level of Jew-hatred is seen in Egyptian, Jordanian, Yemeni and Algerian news sites. I don't recall seeing this type of thing in Saudi Arabian sites.

If a right-wing Christian would say this, it would be major news. But when Arabs say it, it is ignored - the world doesn't even know that this kind of hate exists in the Arab world.

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Mega Purim Cartoon and Meme Dump (15 of them!)

Purim is definitely the time to catch up on all the cartoons and memes that I have posted on Twitter in recent weeks.

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03/24 Links: Why antisemitism and anti-Zionism are so deeply intertwined; The Emirate of Palestine?; Schumer’s Folly; Elon Gold on the Power of Humor

From Ian:

Why antisemitism and anti-Zionism are so deeply intertwined

Statehood is built into Jewish consciousness. Israel is more than just a place where Jews can be free and safe. As Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of pre-state Israel said: Israel is not external to Judaism but inherently part of Jewish consciousness. To wit: Jews across the religious denominations pray for the return to Zion in their daily liturgy. And religious or not, the vast majority of Jews feel inextricably, soulfully bound to Israel and describe themselves as Zionists.

So while anti-Zionists defend themselves by claiming they are not anti-Semites, when anti-Zionists declare “no Zionists allowed,” they are actually saying, “No Jews allowed.” The fact that so many anti-Israel demonstrations are targeting Jewish rather than Israeli institutions underscores this dynamic.

The interfacing of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism was never more apparent than on October 7. The goal of Hamas, like their antecedent Haman, goes beyond destroying Israel; its mission – as articulated in the founding Hamas charter – is to kill as many Jews as possible. Jews worldwide felt personally attacked that day, understanding that if Hamas could, each and every Jew would have been murdered.

This doesn’t mean that every anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite. There are always exceptions to a rule. But the exception doesn’t void the rule. It’s one thing to disagree, even vehemently, with some core Israeli policies. But anti-Zionism goes well beyond that to object to the very notion of Jewish self-determination, and thereby target 7 million Jews, half of the world’s Jewish population who are now living in Zion, and many thousands more who yearn to make “aliya,” or move home to Israel.

Indeed, Zionism is a play on the Hebrew word “tziun-metzuyan,” meaning a stamp of excellence. It is there in Israel that all Israelis living in a sovereign nation have the potential to do their humble share to make this world a better place.

Purim is the story of a vulnerable, powerless Jewish people living in the diaspora threatened with physical and spiritual annihilation. Its unwritten message is the necessity for Jews to be Zionist, to live in Zion, to have a homeland wherein it is in their power to protect themselves with strength, and what Israel’s army calls the “purity of arms.”

According to the Book of Esther, the Jews in ancient Persia were ultimately saved by the grace of the king. But the State of Israel allows Jews to save themselves.

Andrew Pessin: The Emirate of Palestine?

There are many competing ideas about “the day after” the Israel-Hamas war, about how to fill the dangerous vacuum left in Gaza should Israel succeed in destroying Hamas. Overlooked, however, is a particularly intriguing suggestion by the anonymous blogger Elder of Ziyon that deserves wider attention.

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What are the main possibilities?

Israel doesn't want Gaza back. It doesn't want to govern two million hostile Palestinians, nor take over day-to-day governance. Imagine the suicide bombings at every governmental office. And, of course, it would be "occupation."

Israel has tried empowering local clans as alternate rulers for years and it has never worked out: they fight amongst themselves, there are too many threats from armed Islamists, and no one wants to look like a puppet of Israel.

Some (such as the U.S.) have pushed for a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority (P.A.) to reassert control, but the P.A. is corrupt and weak, despised by its own citizens, in fact complicit in terror against Israelis, and “revitalization” is a farce. The P.A. lost Gaza to Hamas once and would likely lose it again, either by election or by force.

Others have proposed a multinational force or rule that would include Arab states, a kind of “Arab mandate.” Though there are advantages, it means that Gaza would become a hot spot for geopolitical rivalries between at least Qatar and Saudi Arabia. But Qatari influence would be disastrous. Qatar supports Hamas both directly and through Al Jazeera, the most influential source of “news” in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia might want more influence, but without peace with Israel, it is limited in what it can do. Egypt doesn't want Gaza. Egyptians hate everything about it. After all, it was Egypt that turned it into a virtual prison for Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war and to this day.

So who should run Gaza the day after Hamas is eradicated?

When Israel left Gaza in 2005, optimists thought it could become a new Singapore. Palestinian incompetence and Hamas ended that fantasy. Hate for Israel was more important than helping Palestinians thrive.

But, as Elder of Ziyon points out, there is one country that could turn Gaza into that wonderful place: the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). Gaza should become the eighth United Arab Emirate.

Ruthie Blum: The Russian dictator’s double terrorism standards

This is rich, coming from a leader who has been cementing relations with Iran, the globe’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism, and its proxies. One of these is Hamas, whose foot soldiers invaded Israel on Oct. 7, raping, torturing, beheading, burning alive and abducting men, women and babies.

Less than three weeks later, Russia hosted a delegation of their honchos in Moscow. The purpose of the chummy get-together, also attended by Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy foreign minister of the ayatollah-led regime in Tehran, was to come up with ways to stop the “Zionist crimes supported by the United States and the West.”

In other words, the aim of the meeting was to devise a plan to prevent Israel from defending itself and retaliating against the perpetrators of the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. Oh, and to plot the demise of America and Europe.

More recently, Putin went a step further in his pursuit of terrorism ties. Russia’s envoy for the Middle East and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov, mediated talks in Moscow on Feb. 29 between Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian organizations operating in the region, primarily in Syria and Lebanon.

The goal of the three-day event, which concluded on March 2, was to unify the disparate factions towards the creation of a Palestinian government—for a future state—whose members cease infighting and invest all their energy in the shared objective of annihilating Jews.

So, Putin is pre-disposed to Islamist terrorists, as long as he and Mother Russia are not their target. Meanwhile, the ease with which he slaughters those who get on his bad side doesn’t put a dent in his passing of moral judgment on Jerusalem and Washington. His disdain for the latter, by the way, caused him to pooh-poohed its warning this month about an imminent attack in Moscow.

His hypocrisy pales in comparison, however, to that of Hamas, which on Saturday “condemn[ed] in the strongest terms the terrorist attack that targeted civilians in Moscow, killing and wounding dozens of people.”

Putin’s response to the carnage at Crocus City Hall, like the reaction on the part of the genocidal butchers with whom he sided after Oct. 7, gives the term “double standards” a whole new meaning.

Today's antisemitism in Arab news sites

All from Saturday. All from Arab news sites indexed by Google News.

Al Ghad (Jordan), in part one of a series titled "The ideological foundations of genocidal Zionist thought:"

Not only us Arabs, but every non-Jew, from time immemorial until the Day of Judgment, is an “animal” and a servant of the Jews, with divine will, and a legitimate goal for killing....It is rooted in the sacred teachings, and because it is the common doctrinal principle of Jewish theology that is easy to recruit as a ready-made rallying statement.

Al Thawra (Yemen) part 5 of "The Jews Are Enemies Of Humanity:"

The Crusades, the First and Second World Wars, and what we are experiencing in our current era, the signs of a Third World War, emerge as the most prominent historical milestones that shaped the course of the global transformations that were planned. The Jewish moneylenders and the criminal Freemasons sought to implement it, and they reaped its fruits at every stage, as we will explain briefly, quoting the author of the book "The Jews are Behind Every Crime", where the Jewish moneylenders achieved huge profits, through loans to finance wars, and determining the victor and the vanquished, according to the Masonic interest. Judaism, just as the Jewish Freemasons achieved more domination, influence and hegemony, leading to the realization of the Zionist idea, in the form of a usurping entity, enjoying sovereignty and political recognition, and carrying out the most heinous crimes and genocides against the Palestinian people, without deterrence, oversight or accountability.

Also Al Thawra: "A Symposium At The University Of Hodeidah Entitled 'Reasons For The Jews’ Control Over Some Nations'"

Shorouk News (Egypt):

British-Jewish director, Jonathan Glazer, won an Academy Award for his film depicting the Holocaust. In light of this, the Syrian “Dar Al-Fikr” website published an article by writer Elias Khoury, in which he discussed the director’s success in portraying the Holocaust as a human event not only related to the Jews, by pointing out that Israel is now creating a Holocaust in Gaza...

This is every day. And no "human rights" champions seem to have a problem with it.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

From the Jerusalem Post:

"We announce the death of the Zionist prisoner, 'Yagev Buchshtav,' 34 years old, as a result of a lack of medicine and food," Hamas claimed in a statement published to their telegram channel on Saturday.

Yagev Buchshtav, 34, and his wife, Rimon Kirsht Buchstav, 36, who worked in alternative medicine, were taken hostage from Kibbutz Nirim on October 7. Rimon was released from captivity on November 28, as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

The terrorist organization remarked, "We had previously warned that enemy prisoners are suffering from the same conditions that our people are suffering from."

I have not heard any claims that anyone in Gaza who is healthy and in their 20s or 30s or 40s have died of starvation.

Which means that, assuming Yagev Buchshtav died, he died because Hamas killed him or denied him food altogether.

His wife Rimon was abducted along with Yagev, and she was released in November.

May Yagev's captors suffer a much worse fate than he seems to have.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

NPR writes about Purim, and makes it sound like Chapter 9 where the Jews defend themselves from the enemies that have been planning to eradicate them is a bloodthirsty revenge fantasy that Israelis are now following:

After Haman's plot is foiled, the Jews are actually still in danger — because the king's decree to kill the Jews has gone out, and can't be repealed. So instead, they arm the Jews to let them fight back.

And they do. And they kill 75,000 people across the empire.

"It's really only in modern times that people sort of refocus attention on it. And say like, wait a second — this is actually kind of bloodthirsty, and a little bit over the top," says Koller.

And, he says, for good reason.

"You take 2,000 years of fantasy violence and marry it to a real world in which people actually have machine guns, and suddenly it gets really dark."

Haman is considered to be a descendant of Amalek, the tribe that attacked the Israelites in the desert. And there's a commandment that's read on the Shabbat before Purim to eradicate Amalek and every generation. Rabbi Jill Jacobs heads T'ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.

Jacobs notes there are sadly those in recent eras who have taken this not as satire or metaphor, but literally.

Professor Aaron Koller points to Nazis like Julius Streicher who read Chapter 9 as evidence that the Jews were bloodthirsty, and should be eradicated before they attacked. And thirty years ago Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Israeli settler, murdered Muslim worshippers in Hebron — an attack carried out intentionally on Purim.

"And it's also more recently been invoked by Prime Minister Netanyahu also as a justification for killing Palestinians," says Jacobs.

This is so incorrect on so many levels.

The Sabbath before Purim is meant to remember the evil that Amalek attempted, not to eradicate them. Netanyahu mentioned Amalek specifically in the context of memory, not of destruction.

But a careful reading of the megillah shows that the Jews only killed those who were organized to kill them. It was supreme self defense.

Chapter 8 says "The king has permitted the Jews of every city to assemble and fight for their lives; if any people or province attacks them, they may destroy, massacre, and exterminate its armed force together with women and children, and plunder their possessions."

The decree was only in the context of self-defense, only against anyone who attacks the Jews.

But what about the allowances of killing their women and children and to take their possessions?

That never happened. Chapter 9 makes it clear that the only people killed were men who were preparing a genocide against Jews, and no possessions were taken.

And so, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month—that is, the month of Adar—when the king’s command and decree were to be executed, the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power.

Throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the Jews mustered in their cities to attack those who sought their hurt....

So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon those who hated them.

In the fortress Shushan the Jews killed a total of five hundred men. ...They also killed... the ten sons of Haman son of Hammedatha.

...The rest of the Jews, those in the king’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil.

There is not even a hint that the Jews killed women or children, and they explicitly did not take any spoils of war.

The megillah says that many of the Jews' enemies were afraid of the Jews because of the decree, so apparently many of them desisted from their original plan to destroy the Jews - and they were evidently spared.

In fact, Jewish legend says that Haman had at least one daughter (who dumped garbage on Haman's head as he led Mordechai on horseback) and we know he had an evil wife, but no one I'm aware of says they were killed. (One midrash says that Haman's wife became Esther's servant. )

This is not a revenge fantasy. This is not bloodlust. This is a teaching about self-defense. The Jews only attacked those who were preparing to attack them and it was a fight "for their lives."

I don't know why the Jews who were interviewed made this sound like it was immoral. The lesson is that Jews should be allowed to defend themselves from genocidal antisemites.

And that applies today as well.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

03/23 Links: ‘Reactionary Anti-Imperialism’ as the new Totalitarian Temptation, from Foucault to 7 October; Israel accepts US hostage swap compromise, awaits Hamas response

From Ian:

‘Reactionary Anti-Imperialism’ as the new Totalitarian Temptation, from Foucault to 7 October

It may seem ridiculous, but it is a serious matter in both senses when some queer activists— apparently with suicidal disregard for what they are endorsing—express their solidarity with Hamas. One can only imagine how long a queer solidarity group would survive in the realm of Sharia [it’s worth noting that anti-Israel Palestinian LGBTQ activists have their headquarters in Tel Aviv and not in Ramallah]. But one doesn’t have to use imagination to see the enthusiasm that the annihilation of Israel, explicitly propagated by Hamas and Iran, generates among millions upon millions of sympathisers of these Palestinian ‘freedom fighters.’ The most prominent advocates of Hamas, Yanis Varoufakis and Judith Butler, waited until Israel reacted (as Hamas had no doubt expected) with counter-strikes, which have since resulted in the deaths of an appalling number of civilians in Gaza, before publicly denouncing the Israeli counter-attack while ignoring the gang of murderers who massacred more than 1,200 people on October 7thjust because they were Jews or associated with Jews [the sort of people that the Nazis had called ‘Jew servants’].

Others didn’t wait that long. Like some of her American counterparts, the Austrian Nicole Schöndorfer (who is very prominent on social media) rushed the very first day after the pogrom to celebrate on Instagram the terrorists who themselves died in the butchering of Jews as ‘martyrs.’ One remembers the atheist Foucault, who denounced religious criticism of the Islamist movement; so why should we be surprised by women who explicitly describe themselves as feminists and yet celebrate as martyrs of a just cause the young men who raped, mutilated, murdered or kidnapped Israeli women and presented them as trophies to the mob? A linguistic collateral damage of today’s misery is that laudable terms like anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism are so thoroughly discredited by those who misuse them that one has to ask oneself whether new terms will be necessary in order to make linguistic sense of the old ones—to name them correctly to stand up against racism, colonialism, and imperialism.

A few weeks before the Hamas massacre, I was asked what was the easiest way to fuel antisemitism. Today I would have to answer: by massacring as many Jews as possible. Nothing has fuelled hatred of Jews more than the worst attack on Jews since the Shoah, and because the attack was carried out against Jews, the rapists and murderers can only be called ‘resistance fighters’ motivated by a ‘holy Hatred’ against foreign Jewish rule in Palestine. ‘Heilige Hass’ (holy hatred) is, by the way, a motif that literally comes from Julius Streicher’s Nazi magazine Der Stürmer and which has been taken over in anti-colonial discourse. There are forms of ignorance that are entirely culpable. One of these is when Israel haters, who see themselves as left-wing, simply refuse to acknowledge the political foundations of Hamas.

Hamas has never made a secret of the fact that it is not concerned with national equality, social justice or a so-called ‘two-state solution’, but only with the destruction of Israel—which Hamas says represents the most important stage in the battle for final victory between believers and unbelievers. Its foundational charter from 1988 is a compact collection of anti-Semitic stereotypes and a blatant declaration of intent: that an Islamic theocracy will one day be established ‘between the river and the sea.’

When the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas won free elections. Richly supplied with funds from all over the world, it then had the opportunity to establish self-government for the benefit of the residents of Gaza. But that was not its goal; rather, it quickly set about liquidating its Palestinian opponents and imposing a series of fundamentalist laws on the population. Hamas has done everything in its power to turn Gaza into the ‘largest open-air prison in the world,’ while denying that it was they who had created it. In 1970, after Israel had taken over Gaza, 280.000 people lived there. When Israel withdrew completely in 2005 there were about 1.2 million residents, and after fewer than twenty more years there are now 2.2 million: This is what the demographic development looks like when the ‘Zionist aggressor’ engages in ‘genocide’ for more than five decades.

Forty-five years after Foucault abandoned his intellectual and moral standards to support ‘political spirituality,’ the most sensitive youth in the West are forming an alliance with one of the most brutal terrorist representatives of ‘political spirituality.’ There are some new things that the anti-Zionists put forward between Berkeley and Berlin—such as the rigorous rejection of the Enlightenment legacy, which is denounced in self-loathing as a weapon of white supremacy; but the core of their accusation is ancient.

The US sees situation in Gaza throughout Hamas' optics

The administration’s policy is gradually but consistently drifting toward hope-based and optimism-based policy, rather than being pragmatic, which raises serious concerns regarding their ability to develop realistic plans for the conflict going forward.

For the United States, the optics of the situation in Gaza supersedes long-term thinking, which would put in place the conditions for improving the lot of the people in Gaza - in other words, by toppling Hamas' rule in Gaza.

As a terrorist organization and a non-state player, Hamas is able to use the most powerful weapon in its arsenal, which is to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza in order to generate international pressure. This tool of theirs is a force multiplier, which it uses to the utmost effect on world public opinion which, quite justifiably, is shocked by the human suffering there.

In such a situation, a terrorist organization will always be able to extract concessions from the other side. Hamas loses nothing when Gazan civilians die. It can only gain from this. Therefore it has no interest whatsoever in avoiding actions that would exacerbate the humanitarian predicament in Gaza while still maintaining the pretense of fighting for the good of the Palestinian people.

When American humanitarian aid enters Gaza by sea, there is no guarantee Hamas won’t commandeer it. In an extreme scenario, which is by no means unrealistic, Hamas might indeed attack the American warships using the ever-effective excuse - defending the Palestinian people against a Western invasion, rejection of aid from a world power that is aiding the Israeli “occupation” in Gaza or other propaganda-friendly pretexts.

Anyone who has a genuine interest in stabilizing the Gaza situation and preventing Hamas' growth long term, must insist on three conditions: 1. Destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities. 2. Prevention of any dependency between the civilian population and Hamas, which will exploit its distress to pursue its own goals and 3. De-radicalization of the education system, purging it of incitement, in such a way that it will no longer toxify the next generation of Gazan children, preventing them from becoming tomorrow’s terrorists.

To achieve these goals, and to reduce the number of dead in the long term, Hamas must be defeated at all costs. Failure to get the job done is going to be much more costly to Israel and to the Gazan population in the long term.

The United States, too, was forced to make some highly agonizing decisions during World War II, such as the fateful decision to drop two Atomic bombs on Japan. In the short term, the bombs killed hundreds of thousands, but in the long term, they saved millions of Japanese lives since that country surrendered several days later.

This, according to historical estimates, prevented the unnecessary death of millions more on both sides - American and Japanese. Israel, for its part, is not even seeking to end the war in Gaza in this same painful way - it only seeks legitimacy for the eradication of Hamas’ military and government apparatus and is doing so with the greatest surgical precision possible under the difficult circumstances presented by the battlefield.

To be able to comprehend this simple principle, it is advisable first to begin understanding the Hamas enemy itself - instead of assuming it is ultimately interested in the good of the Gazan population.

03/22 Links Pt2: The triumph of the blood libel; Do Arab-Israelis Stand with Israel?; Who Is in Charge at The New York Times?; Candace Owens Fired from Daily Wire

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The triumph of the blood libel

Israelis and Jews around the world were stunned by the swiftness and ferocity of the propaganda campaign Hamas’s supporters in the West launched in the immediate wake of Hamas’s orgy of murder and sadism in southern Israel. Less than 24 hours after the news broke, Hamas supporters at Harvard University kicked off the hate campaign by getting 31 student groups to sign a statement blaming Israel for Hamas’s atrocities.

As details of the crimes began to flow, Hamas’s supporters in the West responded with violent denials of all of them. No rape. No immolation of children. No torture. No nothing. It was all Israel’s fault, they said. Israel killed and raped its own people. And now the Jews are raping Palestinian women. How do we know? Because they are Jews.

On the face of things, the rapidity and shamelessness of the projection of blame and culpability onto Israel was shocking. Normal people could be forgiven for assuming that in the face of crimes of this enormity, Hamas’s supporters would lay low. But that assumption misses the point.

Oct. 7 was one battle in a larger jihad to annihilate Israel. Propaganda in the form of blood libels is a central component of the war. The libels against Jews and the Jewish state today play the same role as they played in the Middle Ages, just on a national scale. If Jews deserved to be killed because Jews are evil, then the Jewish state deserves to be annihilated because it is the evil Jewish state. Everything that happens to Israel is proof of its evil. Every crime committed against Israel is a crime Israel committed. And if Israel doesn’t commit crimes attributed to it, then that’s because good people like Power and Borrell stood in its way.

The depressing thing, of course, is that Hamas’s strategy is working. The latent Jew-hatred in the West was widespread enough to support their crimes. The propagation of the blood libels by the United Nations, the European Union and the State Department is a disturbing indicator of just how bad things really are.

The question is what can Israel—and Jews more broadly—do in the midst of this avalanche of blood libel? The answer is twofold.

First, Israel must stop trying to prove a negative. No one cares if we are really blood-thirsty vampires. Persuasion doesn’t work with people moved by emotion, particularly hatred. Instead, Israel and Jews worldwide need to concentrate on rallying the people who viscerally understand what is going on and aren’t taken in by anti-Semitic cartoons and Hamas propaganda, even if it is spoken by Samantha Power.

As for the haters, countering them means going on the offensive. On the battlefield in Gaza, it means destroying Hamas completely so that everyone understands that attacking the Jews is a bad idea. And on the battlefields of the United Nations, the European Union, the State Department, Harvard, Berkeley, New York City and London, the answer is to expose the haters with as much vigor and ferocity as they demonize the Jews.

Bret Stephens: Directing a Movie Doesn’t Make You a Mideast Authority

In 1978 the English actress Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her role in the film “Julia” and used the occasion to denounce “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews everywhere.”

Later in the ceremony, the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky used his own turn onstage to offer a memorable rebuttal: “I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave,” he said to applause, “that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”

Forty-six years on, history repeated itself.

Last week, Jonathan Glazer, director of the Holocaust-themed film “The Zone of Interest,” accepted the Academy Award for best international feature film and delivered a diatribe to “refute” having his “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”

It took a few days, but the spirit of Chayefsky came roaring back. In a “Statement From Jewish Hollywood Professionals,” hundreds of signatories, including the actress Julianna Margulies and the producer Lawrence Bender, denounced Glazer for “drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination,” arguing that it could fuel antisemitism.

Politically speaking, I’m with the signatories. People can have varying views of the war in Gaza, but comparing it with the Holocaust, as Glazer did, is profoundly wrong. Among other differences, Jews did not provoke the Holocaust by murdering, raping and kidnapping German civilians in a deliberate effort to start a war.

But I’m also allergic to what Eli Lake, in a brilliant recent essay in Commentary magazine, called the “As a Jew” phenomenon: the habit of prefacing political opinions with a declaration of identity, as if an opinion about Israeli politics (usually, an anti-Israel opinion) somehow becomes more credible and significant because the speaker happens to be Jewish.

At the Anti-Israel Carnival

More disturbing than costumes are the carnivalesque inversions of ideals central to a university education. Thus, when JFAS has sought co-presenters for lectures by entirely mainstream scholars, we have struggled to find a single academic department willing to put its name on a poster. On the other hand, those same departments and university-sponsored research centers present seemingly endless, one-sided propaganda that vilifies Israel. Even the concept of “diversity” is blatantly inverted. In February, a university-sponsored research center hosted a lecture by Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, who is notorious for demonizing Israel. During the Q&A period, a professor began by saying: “I am speaking as an Israeli, I am speaking as a Jew, and I am speaking as a Zionist. . . . We are here. We want to talk, and we look forward to talking about this issue and all issues with all of you.” The Jewish professor was interrupted and heckled. Later, Students for Justice in Palestine posted a video of the incident, asserting, “This is extremely unprofessional, insensitive, & makes his students and many students across the Rutgers Newark campus feel unsafe.” Dozens of comments on the post predictably agreed that a request for dialogue was really an act of violence, with some stating openly that the diversity of the student population was reason to silence Zionists.

A main feature of the carnivalesque is its celebration of the carnal or profane. True to form, campus protestors have consistently celebrated actual bodily violence. Everyone is, by now, familiar with the rationalization and even cheering of Hamas’s atrocities on October 7. Even more shocking was the promotion of violence that took place at a protest here at Rutgers in January. Shouting into a megaphone, a leader of the protest glorified precisely such violence when she proclaimed, “dying as a Martyr, dying as a hero is one of the greatest sacrifices you can do as a Palestinian and as a Muslim.” She then led a series of chants in Arabic: “Even if you aren’t Muslim, if you say these chants, you are resisting on behalf of the Palestinians.”

Like many cultures, Judaism has its own spring carnival in the holiday of Purim, with all its mandated excesses, masks, and inversions in celebration of the defeat of Haman and his allies. Over the centuries, the rabbinic tradition has been largely successful in curbing and sublimating the darker aspects of the carnivalesque in the service of its higher ideals. Yet Jews are not immune to the violent excesses of the carnivalesque; witness Baruch Goldstein’s massacre on Purim in 1994. Especially now, as Israel’s justified, defensive war against Hamas is being sullied by unsanctioned violence by extremist Jews in the West Bank, we all bear responsibility for ensuring that the levity of Purim is channeled toward “light and joy,” to borrow a phrase from the Book of Esther.

Mikhail Bakhtin thought that the chaotic spirit of the carnival would “free human consciousness, thought and imagination for new potentialities.” Perhaps. But the university is an institution carefully constructed over centuries to advance consciousness, thought, and imagination through the free and open pursuit of truth. It will have to find a way to reject masked intimidation, brazen inversions, and the celebration of violence if it is to remain one.

At Rutgers and on countless other campuses nationwide, the carnivalesque has given license to an ugly hatred that has now been unmasked. Undoing the inversions, lies, and base behavior that this hatred has engendered will require a renewed commitment to the central mission of American colleges. My university would be a good place to start.