https://x.com/KosherCockney/
As previously noted California University Administrators wimp out like the pitiful giants they are.
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Berkeley Lets Loose an Anti-Semitic Mob
Rioters attack Jewish students, and leaders claim to be helpless.
Antisemitism took a frightening turn Monday at the University of California, Berkeley, where a pro-Palestinian mob surrounded a campus auditorium, broke a window, and harassed Jewish students trying to enter the building.
Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat was invited by a Jewish student group to address the subject of Israel and international law. This included “the rules of wartime conduct and how the [Israel Defense Forces] can better protect civilians,” according to an Instagram post by Students Supporting Israel at Berkeley.
But the speech never happened, as besieged Jewish students gathered inside a nearly empty auditorium in Zellerbach Playhouse while some 200 protesters chanted “intifada” and “free Palestine” and banged on windows, surrounding and shouting at those trying to enter. Students and the speaker were evacuated for their personal safety.
Shouting down unpopular speakers is common on campus, but the vitriol directed at students sets this incident apart. One student captured on a video clip said the protesters shouted “Jew Jew Jew” in his face and spat at him. Other students reported heckling and harassment as they tried to get past the mob. There’s no way to know how many other students stayed away out of fear of the mob or social ostracism merely for showing up.
Silencing and intimidation are the intended outcome, and anti-Jewish groups script their messages in the campus vernacular of white imperialism. In a “campus wide call to action,” Bears for Palestine said Mr. Bar-Yoshafat, who served in the Israel Defense Forces, had been invited to speak “to spread settler colonial Zionist propaganda about the very genocide he has participated in.” The group declared it would “not allow for this event to go on.” In their moral confusion, the same students wearing “Ceasefire Now” shirts were shouting “intifada, intifada,” endorsing violent protests.
In a statement after the event, Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ and executive vice chancellor Benjamin Hermalin wrote that the incident “violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values.” The letter notes that the university took precautions to add security, including campus police. They said the goal was to keep students safe and let the event go forward, but “it was not possible to do both given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.”
That’s some admission. When the hate directed at Jewish students on campus is so extreme that the university can’t protect them, the failure rests with school officials as much as with the harassers. All the more so if the offenders aren’t punished with suspensions or expulsions. Progressives claim that being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist isn’t the same as being anti-Semitic. Tuesday at Berkeley shows how dishonest that claim is.
And
If Berkeley Wants to Protect Free Speech It Will Expel Its Rioters
Campuses must have the highest tolerance for expression, but no
tolerance at all for violence like that exhibited by an anti-Israel mob
this week.
by Greg Lukianoff
It’s sad that civilization was founded the moment a man flung a word at his enemy instead of a spear. On our most elite college campuses—most recently, the University of California, Berkeley—the plan seems to be to unfound it.
Earlier this week, a student group called Bears for Palestine published on Instagram its intention of “combatting lies” by shutting down an event featuring Israeli Defense Forces reservist and lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat.
“This individual is dangerous,” the post continued. “He has committed crimes against humanity, is a genocide denier, and we will not allow for this event to go on. . . . SHUT IT DOWN.”
Before the event was scheduled to begin Monday evening, hundreds of student protesters descended on the building where it was supposed to take place—banging on doors and windows, preventing students from entering, forcing their way in, and shouting “intifada, intifada.”
Protesters broke glass doors. One male student alleges being spit on by a protester. Another student—a woman—was injured. Yet another student claims that “Jew” was screamed as an epithet.
The mob got their way. The event was canceled. Bar-Yoshafat, along with the students who had attended the event, were escorted out the back of the theater.
This has to stop.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin posted a note the next day on the university website expressing their “deep remorse and sympathy to those students and members of the public who were in the building, fearing for their safety.”
They went on to say that, in the days ahead, they would “decide on the best possible path to fully understand what happened and why; to determine how we will address what occurred; and to do everything possible to preclude a repeat of what happened.”
Please. We know exactly how this eruption should be addressed.
Any students who took part in the violence should be expelled—assault is a crime and most certainly violates the school’s code of conduct. As for the students who organized the shutdown but did not participate in the violence, they should be punished.
Everyone has a right to due process. But violent rioters have no place at any institution devoted to the fearless pursuit of truth. Certainly not at Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement.
Violence is not extreme speech, but the antithesis of speech—and the antithesis of what higher education is supposed to be all about.
Over the past decade, freedom of speech, and academic freedom more generally, have suffered terribly. Since 2014, more professors have lost their jobs for expressing an unpopular viewpoint than at any point in the past 80 years—especially in 2020 and 2021.
While the cancellations have tapered off somewhat in 2023—even the most rabid cancelers eventually run out of witches to burn—something just as awful has replaced them: a huge uptick in campus shout-downs, some of which turned violent.
Berkeley, of course, was the site of one of the worst demonstrations against freedom of speech in recent memory: in 2017, when 1,500 rioters caused $100,000 in damages and injured six to protest a planned speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.
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More two handed treatment from Palestinians. One hand strikes, the other caresses'. What frauds they continue to be. No wonder they are rejected by their own nd despised.
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Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor prays that Palestinians or Allah will punish the US:
“[America] Satan of the period, the devil of the period, Antichrist of the generation, the plague of the generation”
“I swear by Allah, this [US] war is a war on religion, a war on Islam. They want us to adopt their morality and describe ourselves in their terms, the inferior and lowly terms and characteristics [such as] homosexuals, nudity, fraud, and [financial] interest.”
"He [Allah] will punish the Pharaoh of this age [America], the criminals of this age... by our hands or by His punishment. In our hands or pain from Him."
While Mahmoud Abbas begs the head of USAID for money:
"It is important to increase the amount of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip... it is important to renew the American aid programs in the West Bank and Gaza in the fields of infrastructure, health, education, energy and revitalization of the Palestinian economy."
As the United States continues to be the most important international force advocating for Gaza to be handed to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas is defeated, the PA continues to demonize the US as if it were its worst enemy, yet at the same time, it begs the US for money.
In a recent tirade against the US, the most important religious figure in the PA, Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs, defines America as the most evil force in the world endangering all of humanity:
“[America] Satan of the period, the devil of the period, Antichrist of the generation, the plague of the generation.”
He further accuses the United States of going to war against Islam by trying to impose Western liberal values, including acceptance of homosexuals, on the Palestinian Authority:
"America, which is fighting today – not only against the Palestinian people – it is fighting against Islam... I swear by Allah, this war is a war on religion, a war on Islam. They want us to adopt their morality and describe ourselves in their terms, the inferior and lowly terms and characteristics [such as] homosexuals, nudity, fraud, and [financial] interest."
While it is known that the PA emphatically rejects many liberal Western values and rejects accepting homosexuals in society, this topic has not been an issue lately. This demonization of the US by the PA’s top religious figure has nothing to do with any current American policy but is using Islamic teachings to prove that America in its essence is evil.
In a subsequent sermon, Abbas' advisor cursed the US - that Allah should punish the US with pain either by His hands or by the Palestinians:
"The Pharaoh of this period, America... just as He [Allah] punished the wicked in the past, so He will punish the wicked of this period. He will punish the Pharaoh of this age [America], the criminals of this age, sooner or later... by our hands or by His punishment. By our hands, or by pain from Him."
Abbas' advisor is telling Palestinians that if they attack Americans they will be inflicting Allah's punishment on the Americans that they deserve.
Incredibly, at the same time that the PA is demonizing "Satan" and "Antichrist" America, and notifying Palestinians that Palestinian terror against the US would make them the hand of Allah, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas feels no shame in turning to the US to beg for aid money:
“The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, today (Thursday) received the Director of USAID, Samantha Power... His Excellency noted the role that the American agency can play when it comes to providing aid to the Palestinian people, especially in the difficult circumstances resulting from continued Israeli aggression, in particular in the Gaza Strip. He emphasized that it is important to increase the amount of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, including the north of the Gaza Strip, and it is important to renew the American aid programs in the West Bank and Gaza in the fields of infrastructure, health, education, energy and revitalization of the Palestinian economy.”
While it may seem surprising that the PA is ‘biting the hand that feeds it,’ by insulting and cursing the “plague of the generation” American, this is nothing new. The PA has demonized the US under all administrations, Republicans and Democrats, and it continues because the PA has learned that the US will continue to support the PA’s political aspirations and supply the PA with financial aid, regardless of its behavior. The PA rewards terrorists, names schools after terrorist mass murderers of children, pays monthly stipends to families of suicide bombers, glorifies murderers of civilians as heroes and role models, and presents the extermination of Jews as an Islamic goal. Yet, the US has never defined the PA as the terror entity that it is, and has never stopped funding the PA. The PA has been demonizing and calling for Allah to punish America for years and now joins Iran in defining the US as Satan, yet the PA has nothing to fear. The PA has learned that it can strike America as often as it wants, and America will always be there supporting it.
The following are longer excerpts from the cited items:
"[America] Satan of the period, the devil of the period, Antichrist of the generation, the plague of the generation, America... America, which is fighting today –, not only against the Palestinian people – it is fighting against Islam... I swear by Allah, this war is a war on religion, a war on Islam. They want us to adopt their morality and describe ourselves in their terms, the inferior and lowly terms and characteristics [such as] homosexuals, nudity, fraud, and [financial] interest."
“Some of the world's powers imagine to themselves - as Pharaoh imagined to himself in the old days, when he said "I am your supreme sovereign" (Quran, 79, verse 24) ... This is also how the Pharaoh of this period, America imagines... which thinks it can do anything without any draw back, and without any consequences... America is using its veto for the third time, to prevent the cessation of the war against our people in the Gaza Strip... May Allah be exalted is justice... and we are sure that he will not let these oppressors go... just as he punished the wicked in the past, so he will punish the wicked of this period. He will punish the Pharaoh of this age [America], the criminals of this age, sooner or later... by our hands or by his punishment. In our hands, or in pain from him. The oppressor will not last.”
Mahmoud Al-Habbash also serves as Chairman of the Supreme Council for Shari'ah Justice and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations.
“The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, today (Thursday) received the Director of the American Agency for International Development USAID, Samantha Power...
His Excellency noted the role that the American agency can play when it comes to providing aid to the Palestinian people, especially in the difficult circumstances resulting from continued Israeli aggression, and in particular in the Gaza Strip. He emphasized that it is important to increase the amount of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, including the north of the Gaza Strip, and it is important to renew the American aid programs in the West Bank and Gaza in the fields of infrastructure, health, education, energy and revitalization of the Palestinian economy.”
And:
Does Might Preclude Morality: Reevaluating Israel's Military Priorities
by Gregg Roman
Israel is increasingly under fire for the conduct of its military in Gaza. However, the only thing it is doing wrong is being less lethal than it should be.
President Biden issued a directive to cut off military aid to countries violating international civilian protection. While it does not specify Israel, the implication that Israel's war in Gaza triggered it is evident.
The president also called Israel's response to Hamas's October 7 attack "over the top."
Continue reading the full article >
Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum.
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The U.S. and Israel Play Into Iran’s
Hands
Treating Hamas and other proxies as discrete threats
allows Tehran’s regional power to accumulate.
By Seth Cropsey
As Israel pushes deeper into Gaza and prepares for war with Hezbollah in the north, Iran’s campaign against the Jewish state and the U.S. is approaching an inflection point. Jerusalem and Washington need a new strategy that recognizes Tehran as their true enemy, whose proxies function like an empire. Instead of telegraphed American airstrikes or the Israeli Octopus Doctrine of punishing Iranian proxies, both nations must work to collapse Iranian power in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Israel’s greatest failure since Oct. 7 is political. Much of the world considers the massacre another round of Israeli-Palestinian violence, not an Iran-orchestrated attack. Since 2021 Hamas has been a full-fledged member of what Tehran calls its “axis of resistance,” a proxy network that spans the Levant, Lebanon and Yemen. Each proxy has a distinct character, but all are united in their hatred of Israel and the U.S. From 2021 on, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have reportedly planned and coordinated operations jointly from a nerve center in Beirut with direct Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps supervision.
America has insisted on a fictitious distinction between Tehran and its proxies. But the threat this pseudo-empire poses to the U.S.—as well as countries across Europe and Asia—is real.
Iran’s goal is regional dominance, by which it plans to export the Islamic revolution throughout the Mideast. An Iran with proxies across the Levant, and in time the Arabian Peninsula, would be a bona fide great power capable of competing with Europe, Russia, China and India for Eurasian influence. It would be able to challenge America directly in military, diplomatic and economic terms. Eurasia has never been able to secure itself absent a stable Middle Eastern order. Even ignoring its oil flows, the Mideast is the nexus point between Europe and Asia and therefore the linchpin of the Eurasian economic power on which the U.S. depends and a key transit route for U.S. military forces.
Yet rather than consider the Israeli struggle as a key to greater geopolitical stability, Washington treats it as merely another Gaza war. Attacks by Iran-backed militants in the Red Sea and on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria are considered aftershocks of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This plays into Tehran’s hands.
Iran’s difficulty is that it can neither win a conventional war against the U.S. nor physically conquer Israel so long as America remains in the region. Tehran therefore seeks other means to force the U.S. out of the Mideast, leaving Israel and Jordan exposed in a manner consistent with the Soviet concept of “reflective control.” Rather than straightforwardly coercing an opponent with military force, the idea is to trick an adversary into doing something against its interest.
Tehran wants to convince the U.S. that simply to abandon the Middle East on the grounds that it’s too much trouble to maintain its position and defend its allies. In particular, Tehran needs the U.S. to abandon the al-Tanf complex, a series of Levantine bases that provide a buffer between Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The complex dominates the most natural Iranian logistics route from Baghdad to Damascus, while shielding Jordan from direct Iranian pressure through Iraq. U.S. access to other Iraqi bases cuts secondary Baghdad-Damascus logistics routes. Under the pretext of rage over the war in Gaza, Iranian proxies are executing missile and drone attacks against these bases.
With the U.S. gone, Iran could unify Iraq, Syria and Lebanon into a single strategic space. Tehran could then incorporate the West Bank into its strategy more directly, pouring more arms and Iranian-trained fighters into it through smuggling routes in Jordan, while also undermining the Jordanian state. With its logistics freed up and Amman under pressure, Tehran could contemplate even more-direct attacks on Israel, including, with a requisite pretext, a proxy-force ground assault from Lebanon and Syria and mass bombardment of Israeli critical infrastructure. The goal is to make the Jewish state unlivable for all but those most dedicated to the Zionist cause. If only a few hundred thousand Israelis remain, Iran and its network can overwhelm them with relative ease.
Neither Jerusalem nor Washington is acting to prevent this outcome. Neither country treats Iran’s proxy network as the veritable empire it is. Tehran hides behind implausible deniability by claiming that it has no direct control over these proxies. Because Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are legally independent states with standard sovereign rights and privileges, any reprisals impose a higher political cost on Israel and the U.S. That deters serious military actions to degrade Iran’s capabilities.
Israel conducts tit-for-tat strikes against Iranian proxies, but that doesn’t put a meaningful cost on Tehran’s actions. The Jewish state doesn’t have the military capability to strike Iran directly and cause crippling damage. An Israeli partnership with Gulf Arabs could threaten Iran’s domestic stability, and thereby the core of this empire, but that’s out of the question. Since 2019, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have studiously avoided escalation. Neither clearly has any interest in serving on the front lines of regional conflict.
To counter Tehran’s strategy, Jerusalem and Washington should invert Iranian logic by forcing the regime to feel the costs of an empire. Those costs must exceed the ineffective airstrikes the U.S. has executed in recent months. In the short term, this should include a more aggressive targeted killing campaign against Iranian and proxy operatives in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Eventually, Israel and America should apply enough pressure to force Iran to step into the open and take actual control over these territories, with the requisite costs of daily administration.
Iran has cash, but a more expansive sanctions regime, a change in oil prices or other macroeconomic disruptions would undermine the resources it has to fund its proxy conquest campaign. Adding direct rule to this set of tasks would overwhelm Iranian capacity, transforming Tehran’s proxy network into a costly, restive empire, populated primarily by Sunnis with few sympathies for Tehran’s Shiite mullahs. This strategy would cut each head off the Iranian imperial monster, until it is left only with the core.
The issue is the degree to which Iranian manipulation of the U.S. has already succeeded. Washington has failed to respond seriously to an Iranian attack since Oct. 7, holding to the lie that Tehran isn’t in control of an axis it quite obviously is. The result is American paralysis, which will only intensify as Iranian pressure increases.
Mr. Cropsey is president of the Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is author of “Mayday” and “Seablindness.”
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On a visit to my doctor, I asked him, "How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old age home?"
"Well," he said, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub."
"Oh, I understand," I said. "A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup."
"No" he said. "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?
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More Hamas lies, more wanon killings of Israeli's by Palestinians.
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Dear Dick,
This morning, Hamas and media outlets once again manipulated the facts around a tragic incident to accuse and attack Israel – suggesting that the IDF killed more than 100 Palestinians who tried to get access to humanitarian aid.
What actually happened:
The IDF is helping to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian goods into Gaza. Over the past four days, the military has been escorting trucks from the border crossing into the northern Gaza Strip.
This morning as a convoy of more than 30 trucks moved through the territory, thousands of Gazans rushed the trucks and caused a deadly stampede. According to the IDF, truck drivers (private contractors who were not Israeli) then tried to avoid the stampede and struck and killed additional people.
The tragedy was compounded by a separate event in which a mob rushed the last aid truck in the convoy. The group started to move toward Israeli troops who were securing the corridor. Soldiers fired warning shots to try to disperse the threatening crowd. Fearing for their safety, the troops used live fire aiming at the legs of those who posed a threat and refused to move away.
The IDF said that fewer than 10 of the casualties were a result of Israeli fire.
IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari gave a press conference following the military’s probe of the incident.
"No IDF strike was conducted toward the aid convoy," he said. "On the contrary, the IDF was there carrying out a humanitarian aid operation, to secure the humanitarian corridor, and allow the aid convoy to reach its distribution point, so that the humanitarian aid could reach Gazan civilians in the north who are in need."
Watch the full IDF press statement below.
2 Israelis murdered in West Bank terror attack
Three Palestinian terrorists, including a Palestinian Authority police officer, carried out a deadly terror attack in the West Bank today murdering two Israelis in the West Bank town of Eli. The two victims – a 57-year-old father of three and a 16-year-old high school student – were sitting in a car at a gas station when they were ambushed by the terrorists. All three attackers were neutralized after the attack.
The gas station was the site of another deadly terror attack last year, in which four Israelis were killed.
The hunt for Sinwar
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is on the run, moving from place to place underground as the IDF closes in on him.
According to IDF intelligence, the Hamas leader intended to conduct fighting from an underground fortified base in Khan Yunis called "Room 6," which was equipped for extended stays with military personnel and communications lines.
"Sinwar, who is very suspicious by nature, will make mistakes, and when he makes mistakes, we have to be there," said one Israeli source who believes Sinwar has moved to Rafah. "One way or another, we will get him, even if it takes us hours or months."
Israel has now eliminated more than 13,000 terrorists since the war began, according to the IDF. That includes over 450 in the last ten days alone.
Continue to follow AIPAC on social media for the latest updates.
Sincerely,
Alisha Tischler
AIPAC Southeast Regional Director
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