The U.N is one of the most anti-Semitic organizations professing it is dedicated to peace. We ought to get out of the U.N and let China take over.
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The UN is rationalizing the slaughter of Jews
Comments by Secretary-General António Guterres are the latest instance of how the world body sanctions antisemitism and lends legitimacy to a Palestinian victimhood narrative that has no basis in truth.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Where does it come from? That’s the question many people are asking about the shocking refusal on the part of so many academics, artists and other members of the chattering classes to unreservedly condemn the Hamas terrorist organization and the horrifying crimes that it committed on Oct. 7. The willingness of so many to speak as if the actions of the perpetrators were in some way understandable doesn’t make sense. The appalling actions suffered by Israelis—1,400 men, women and children murdered, thousands wounded and more than 200 dragged into captivity in the Gaza Strip, along with the horrific acts of rape, torture and the mutilation of corpses—boggles the mind. Who anywhere deserves this? How can anyone ask for this?
At the heart of all of the answers to these questions is antisemitism, a virus that has proved itself capable of assuming many guises and adapting itself to multiple circumstances over the course of the last century.
But it’s not good enough to simply ascribe this to Jew-hatred. We need to understand why people who don’t think themselves to be antisemitic are doing this. Self-identified progressives believe that their views are, by definition, antithetical to an ideology of hatred. Yet they are nonetheless espousing a point of view that either implicitly or explicitly countenances or otherwise rationalizes a global attitude that enables Hamas.
At the root of the problem is an institution that most people in Israel and the United States tend to ignore: the United Nations.
The world body may be a talking shop that is detached from the realities of the Middle East as well as virtually every other problem facing the planet. However, its leaders and constituent agencies play an outsize role in establishing norms when it comes to international affairs. And if you want to know why progressive thought—as expressed not just in academic settings or in the speeches of members of the left-wing congressional “Squad,” but on the pages of mainstream publications like The New York Times or on broadcast outlets like MSNBC—generally assumes the validity of a narrative that views Israel as an oppressor state and the Palestinians as their hapless victims, then the hatred that is routinely spewed out at the United Nations helps explain why this distressing trend has become so widespread.
But it’s not good enough to simply ascribe this to Jew-hatred. We need to understand why people who don’t think themselves to be antisemitic are doing this. Self-identified progressives believe that their views are, by definition, antithetical to an ideology of hatred. Yet they are nonetheless espousing a point of view that either implicitly or explicitly countenances or otherwise rationalizes a global attitude that enables Hamas.
Hamas terrorists aren’t seeking a two-state solution or aim to adjust Israel’s policies or borders. They aim for its destruction and the genocide of its Jewish population. Yet Gutteres and the many otherwise respectable people in the West who echo his falsehoods to excuse their refusal to condemn Hamas and back Israel act as if the last 75 years of history didn’t happen or doesn’t matter.
Moreover, is it not “collective punishment” for a sovereign state to seek to destroy a terror movement that has complete control of a territory by acts like the cutting off of supplies and electricity that enable it to function. To insist that Israel must enable its enemies to continue to function effectively is to deny it the right to defend itself—a right no one would think of denying any other country.
But as much as Gutteres deserves to be blasted for this, his comments are just the tip of the U.N. iceberg when it comes to discrimination against the Jewish state, and the way it validates the vile notion that what happened on Oct. 7 was the natural consequence of Israeli misdeeds.
The open support and even joyful celebration for the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust by much of the Arab and Muslim community in Europe and the United States doesn’t entirely draw its inspiration from these U.N. institutions or the likes of Guterres.
However, the inability of so many thought leaders and influencers, as well as members of the educational establishment, to react to Hamas’s crimes in the way one might have thought any decent person would is causing a lot of Jews and non-Jews to openly wonder what has happened to modern-day society.
There are many heartening examples of celebrities and politicians condemning the atrocities and supporting Israel’s right to take action to eliminate the threat that Hamas and its supporters pose to civilization and Jews. But there are so many other examples of those rationalizing the terrorists or staying silent when they normally express opinions about any tragedy that befalls humanity that it’s enough to make one wonder how it is that hostility to Israel and indifference to Jewish suffering have become so widespread.
The intersectionality connection to the UN
The acceptance in mainstream American discussions of lies about Israel being a state of “white privilege” and guilty of mistreating Palestinian “people of color” to the rise of intersectionality and critical race theory (CRT) that promote division of the world into two immutable warring racial camps of victims and oppressors can be seen as partially responsible.
In the moral panic that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020, even legacy Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (whose job is to oppose antisemitism) endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement that was itself steeped in anti-Jewish thinking. Desperate to remain in sync with their left-wing allies and fashionable opinion, such groups ignored the consequences that the widespread acceptance that these toxic theories received was bound to create.
Once a movement and ideology that accepted the specious notion that the Palestinian war to destroy Israel was in some way connected to the struggle for civil rights in the United States became accepted by liberal opinion as valid, the next step was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before a considerable portion of elite American opinion was going to start treating Hamas terrorism as nothing more than the Jews getting their comeuppance.
More than three years later, it’s both sad and easy to see how lies about Israel have become so commonplace that no one need wonder why so many, especially young people, take it as a given that the war launched against Israel is in some way its own fault.
Yet the ability of the intersectional left to smear Israel and have its accusations considered credible can also be traced back to the way that the United Nations has legitimized these lies on the international stage.
Both it and the so-called “human rights” organizations it has spawned are the source material for the smearing of Israel by intersectional advocates dating back to the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism when, only days before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, the event in South Africa became ground zero for international antisemitism.
The United Nations, its misnamed Human Rights Council that targets Israel and its kangaroo court Commission of Inquiry (COI) devoted to demonizing the Jewish state and ignoring Palestinian terrorism have provided an otherwise obscure toxic set of beliefs with the sort of official imprimatur that has allowed it to spread and essentially go unchallenged in mainstream venues. In particular, the COI and its South African leader, Navi Pillay, have become a constant source of antisemitic invective and discrimination against Israel.
At the root of this moral rot that has been on display since Oct. 7 is the way the international community has validated antisemitic lies about Israel. It’s time to stop ignoring the role that the United Nations plays in fomenting and legitimizing not just antisemitism but indifference to Jewish suffering. Both the way its agencies and American leftist ideologues have mainstreamed false assumptions about Zionism being a form of racism rather than the liberation movement of the Jewish people can no longer be ignored. It is directly connected to the ability of critical race theory advocates to gain credibility for their toxic ideas about Israel and the Jews.
So what to do now? The vast majority of Americans who reject these lies must demand that Congress defund the United Nations and its agencies, which have provided the foundation not just for antisemitism but support for the mass slaughter of Jews in 2023.
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The Biden administration is failing to enforce laws that protect those attacked by haters and who put others at risk to their persons. The colleges and universities who have failed in their responsibilities are likely to be sued for millions and I also suspect they will lose and be forced to settle.
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Reaping the Whirlwind
The anti-Semitism now on display on college campuses has one of its origins in the erosion of public order during the summer 2020 “racial reckoning.”
Last night, a small cluster of Jewish students barricaded themselves in the library of Cooper Union, while a crowd outside banged on the doors chanting: “Free Palestine.”
Scenes like this have become familiar on college campuses. Radical activists have spent years devising strategies to drown out and, in some cases, physically threaten undesirable voices. In March 2017, masked activists at Middlebury College mobbed the social scientist Charles Murray, chasing him and others into a car. They shoved and pulled the hair of the faculty moderator for the event (who said that she disagreed with Murray about many issues). These tactics of revolutionary exception are now being used to target Jewish people on campuses and in cities across the United States.
The ugly displays of anti-Semitism that have erupted across the United States over the past month are at once the extension of the racial “reckoning” of the summer of 2020 and a profound challenge to the legitimacy of this supposed reckoning. One of the reckoning’s premises was that the urgency of injustice demanded the suspension of civic order and the norms of a liberal society. Rioters were thus permitted to torch public buildings, loot businesses, and tear down statues of “problematic” figures from the past. When the New York Times ran an op-ed by Arkansas senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to help put down violent riots, the newsroom dissolved into a struggle session that ended in the departure of multiple staffers, including editorial page editor James Bennet. In workplaces across the United States at that time, an inopportune comment on Zoom could mean defenestration. For defenders of the reckoning, confronting the history of racism demanded such consequences.
Despite years of warnings about the importance of democratic norms and liberal democracy, the American establishment mostly blessed these efforts. Foundations poured hundreds of millions of dollars into identity-politics activist groups. Major public institutions adopted the creed of the reckoning. Even mild criticisms of ideological purges—such as the Harper’s “Letter on Justice and Open Debate”—were treated as reactionary screeds. Terrified of right-populism, part of the political establishment might have seen the reckoning as a weapon to be used against Donald Trump-supporting “deplorables”; or maybe anti-Trump coalitional politics simply demanded silence in the face of these excesses.
Now the promissory note of the reckoning has come due. In habituating people to the idea that righteousness justifies the abrogation of individual dignity and dismissal of political pluralism, the reckoning taught lessons deeply at odds with the functioning of American democracy.
It grows ever clearer that the hunt for “microaggressions” and the impulse to expunge America’s historical figures might not be simply the products of refined sensitivity or some naive excess of care. Instead, the yearning for extraordinary measures to confront “injustice” can speak to darker impulses—to dominate, to humiliate, and to hurt.
The true cost of these tactics has become more explicit. In cities across the world, activists rip down pictures of people, including children, taken hostage by Hamas. Such actions send clear message of animosity: the sufferings of Jewish hostages should be erased. No monuments for the wrong people has become a chic sentiment in elite American spaces. Now that logic is being chillingly applied to those slain, maimed, and abducted by Hamas.
Activists have used the totem of “settler colonialism” to try to delegitimize the founding of the United States, and that same rhetorical figure has been put into service to dismiss Israeli—and Jewish—life. A Cornell professor called the Hamas attacks “exhilarating.” A late-night Manhattan march of masked protesters proclaimed, “there is only one solution—intifada revolution” (a phrase eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s “final solution”). On American college campuses, activists project on the side of buildings slogans like “glory to our martyrs” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea” (calling for the elimination of Israel). Others hold signs asking to “keep the world clean” that show the Star of David in a trash can.
The 2020 racial reckoning made many fundamental errors. The project of prioritizing ethnic-identity categories falls short of the reality of American mixedness, as well as the demands of pluralist democracy. Attempts to discredit the founding of the United States erode the resources of a broader and more fluid civic belonging; it’s hard to appeal to some common ground as fellow citizens if the United States is seen as illegitimate from its inception. To excuse or celebrate mob violence (either because the mob’s cause is “just” or because it has the “right” opponents) can unleash atavistic sentiments. Mass alienation and civic polarization lead not to inclusion but to an environment in which minorities are easily targeted.
Confronting these challenges demands a new seriousness from policymakers and participants in the public square. Civic order and personal liberties should not be seen as mere constructs for the powerful or a system of benefits for the privileged. Instead, they help protect the vulnerable and provide a check on darker iterations of the will to power. That elite spaces in the United States have been particularly vulnerable to the claims of a revolutionary reckoning makes the task of institutional renewal even more essential. In recent years, policymakers have enshrined the principles of the reckoning—from identity politics to decolonization studies—in public schools across the United States. For many observers, the current unrest should prompt a fast rethinking of this agenda.
That the reckoning had some appeal in the summer of 2020 is perhaps understandable. The enforced isolation and strange atmosphere of the pandemic brought an edge to everything. Race is one of the most charged topics in American life, and the challenges of slavery’s legacy are real. But the reckoning did not meet the test of civic integration—in fact, it assailed the resources for social renewal and public trust. Having seen the fruits of that revolutionary labor—burnt buildings, a broken public square, and now Jewish students in hiding—the American people should recover a politics that affirms their broader civic heritage and defends inherited freedoms.
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Michael Oren: A War Against the Jews
Hatred of Israel cannot be distinguished from hatred of the Jewish people. Incontestably now, anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
By MICHAEL OREN
Graffiti outside an apartment building in Berlin.
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews. When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ ” — The Hamas Charter
“The conventional war of conquest was to be waged parallel to, and was also to camouflage, the ideological war against the Jews.” — Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–1945
It wasn’t the rallies with “Keep the World Clean” posters and chants of “gas the Jews.” Nor was it the glorification of Hamas paragliders by the Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter or, in New York and London, the tearing down of posters with the faces of Israeli children held hostage by Hamas. Not even the off-the-charts uptick in anti-Semitic incidents in Germany (240 percent), United Kingdom (641 percent), and the United States (nearly 400 percent) convinced me.
It was, rather, one of those realizations that so many generations of Jews before me have experienced. A realization that they, like me, surely tried to push out of their minds until the reality became un-mistakeable.
This war is not simply between Hamas terrorists and Israelis. It is a war against the Jews.
The insight began with the international media’s coverage of the conflict. Again, it wasn’t the press’s insistence on calling mass murderers “militants” or citing Hamas and its “Health Ministry” as a reliable source. For close to fifty years—as a student activist, a diplomat, a soldier, a government and military spokesman, and, above all, as a historian—I’ve grappled with the media’s bias against Israel. I’ve long known that the terrorists are “militants” solely because their victims are Jews, and only in a conflict with Israel are terrorists considered credible.
Instead, it was the media’s predictable switch from an Israel-empathetic to an Israel-demonizing narrative as the image of Palestinian suffering supplanted that of Israelis beheaded, dismembered, and burnt. It was the gnawing awareness that dead Jews buy us only so much sympathy.
In fact, there is probably a formula. Six million dead in the Holocaust procured us roughly 25 years of grace before the Europeans refused to refuel the U.S. planes bringing lifesaving munitions to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Fourteen hundred butchered Jews bought us a little less than two weeks’ worth of positive coverage.
Europeans, it’s long been said, never forgave the Jews for the Holocaust. Their guilt was collective and their antisemitism no longer socially acceptable. What a relief many of them felt when it became de rigueur to call Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians Nazi-like. Similarly, haters of Israelis can’t forgive them for being massacred by Hamas terrorists on October 7, and were relieved when, on October 19, they could go back to vilifying the “colonial apartheid state.”
October 19—that was the date of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital incident. Hamas claimed that an Israeli bomb hit the hospital and killed 500 civilians. Again, there was nothing new about Hamas blaming Israel for atrocities that never happened and counting as dead the many who didn’t die. What was unprecedented was the speed at which the world accepted this triple lie—not a hospital but its parking lot was struck by a Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli bomb, killing far fewer than 500. Nevertheless, reflexively, the world imputed evil to Israel.
Within hours of the al-Ahli bombing, both Israel and the United States revealed the truth behind it. Still, almost no one in the media apologized. A full week after the explosion, The New York Times was still bringing in “experts” to intimate Israel’s guilt. After all, the paper was subtly telling us, Israel is perfectly capable of bombing hospitals and, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, possibly bombed this one as well.
What was previously an inkling became, October 19, an epiphany. It marked the moment when I finally peered behind the headlines and recognized their ancient, vicious, core.
For many centuries, the term “innocent Jew” was an oxymoron. Jews were guilty by birth, by belief, and by ancestry. There is a religious tenet of Judaism, reenacted each year at Passover, that all Jews were present at the exodus from Egypt and when God gave the laws to Moses at Sinai. Twisting this is a Christian belief that all Jews were present at, and responsible for, the crucifixion. More than Pilate, more than Judas—a name not chosen randomly—the Jews were damned for deicide.
But killing God is only one of the sins for which Israelis—read: Jews—are being demonized in this war. Behind the reports of the deliberate Israeli bombing of Palestinian neighborhoods—reports that meticulously stress the number of children killed—lies the 144,000 children mythically massacred by the Judean King Herod.
Though understandably feeling vengeful toward Hamas and their allies in Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis do not want innocent Palestinians to die. Hamas, however, places its bunkers, rocket launchers, and headquarters in civilian areas. Though Israel warns these noncombatants to evacuate, Hamas tries to prevent their flight, sometimes at gunpoint. The goal is twofold: to kill as many Israelis as possible, and to kill Palestinians to win the sympathy of the world and so that Israel can be denounced internationally for war crimes.
Hamas’s strategy is clear. Yet much of the press prefers to ignore it. Instead, it repeatedly accuses Israel of seeking to inflict the maximum number of civilian deaths and especially of children. In the media’s rendering, Israel is the new Herod butchering Palestinian innocents.
Forgotten are the thousands of Gazans who followed Hamas terrorists through the ruptured fence into Israel where they joined in the mutilations and raping. Forgotten are the Gazans who beat and spat at a nineteen-year-old Israeli woman who was raped and paraded through their streets. Gone were Gazans who gave out candy and celebrated the slaughter of 1,400 civilians who were truly innocent.
Finally, there is the media meme that the Jews are responsible for their own suffering. This, too, has late Roman roots—in the belief that homelessness and oppression were the punishments due the Jews not only for killing God but then rejecting his resurrected son. Anyone being interviewed by the international press, as I am, repeatedly receives the question: “Doesn’t Israel, by opposing peace with the Palestinians, bear some responsibility for the Hamas attack?”
My response is to recall how Hamas opposed the Oslo process and every subsequent peace initiative, and that Hamas assassinated not only Jews but also the Palestinians who supported the two-state solution. I explain that the reason most Israelis now oppose that solution is because they know that Hamas would take over the nascent Palestinian state in a day. Israel bears much of the responsibility for tensions in the West Bank, I admit.
But the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is purely Hamas’s fault. As a deputy minister in the prime minister’s office, in 2017–18, I was tasked with improving living conditions in Gaza. I learned how Hamas used Gaza’s water pipes to make rockets and dug tunnels under the aquifer and drained it. I learned how Hamas diverted electricity to illuminate its underground bunkers and drastically limited the supply of basic commodities to the population, keeping it dependent on the terrorists. I learned that, when it came to Hamas, everything I knew about human decency was irrelevant.
These are my responses to the journalists. They listen but are seldom, if ever, convinced. Much of the press, I’ve learned, has internalized the ultimate anti-Semitic myth: that Jews just have it coming.
Accordingly, Noam and Yishai Slotki who, waking up to the news of the attack on October 7, instinctively put on their reserve uniforms and left their families to fight only to die and be buried side by side in Jerusalem—according to much of the media’s interpretation of this war, both Noam and Yishai deserved it. By the same token, Tamar Kedem-Siman Tov, a community activist, who, together with her husband and three beautiful children, was gunned down by Hamas, got her comeuppance.
The media is both a mirror and a disseminator of ideas, its two-way function incalculably amplified by the internet. So, the assumption of Jewish guilt and Palestinian innocence permeates the petitions signed by Hollywood stars and Starbucks workers that scarcely mention Hamas’s unimaginable crimes while emphasizing Israel’s imagined ones. So, the image of Jews as both child-killers and God-like in their powers translates into accusations that Israelis actually enjoy murdering women and children, deliberately targeting journalists, and crucifying the pure and powerless Palestinians. The notion that we Jews have it coming to us informed the letter, signed by more than 30 Harvard student organizations, claiming that Hamas’s barbarism “did not occur in a vacuum,” and that “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” Not coincidentally did UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres open his October 23 speech to the Security Council by asserting, “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”
When Hamas itself says its targets are Jews, not Israelis, who’s to question Hamas’s supporters abroad who fail to make that distinction? When a Hamas terrorist phones his parents from a ravaged kibbutz and boasts, “I killed ten Jews with my own hands!” who will wonder why a Berlin synagogue is firebombed? When the UN and other international bodies refuse to condemn the mass evisceration, immolation, and brutal incarceration of Jews in tunnels under Gaza, who will be surprised by the silence of actors, writers, artists, and college presidents? And who will be astonished when Diaspora Jews in increasing numbers say they feel more secure in embattled Israel than on the streets of London, Paris, or New York? Five years to the day after the massacre of eleven worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, who will be shocked if another diaspora community is targeted?
In an agonizing irony, Hamas and its supporters have succeeded where the Jews have long failed. Incontestably now, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Hatred of the Jewish nation-state cannot be distinguished from hatred of the Jewish people. The war between Hamas and Israel, involving the largest and cruelest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, is a war against Jews everywhere. To paraphrase Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz, this is the second war against the Jews.
Michael Oren was formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United States, a Knesset member, and a deputy minister of diplomacy in the prime minister’s office. For more of his writing on Israel visit his Substack, Clarity.
A recent poll of 18-24 year old's found that when asked, “In this conflict do you side more with Israel or Hamas?” 48 percent said Hamas. Read Stanford junior Julia Steinberg to understand how antisemitism, aided by social media, has infected Gen Z: Why My Generation Hates Jews.
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Florida Bans ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ from State Universities Over Hamas Terror Support
Students for Justice in Palestine
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The measure will affect SJP chapters at the University of North Florida, located in Jacksonville, and Florida State University, located in Tallahassee.
By Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner
Florida’s state university system, in consultation with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed colleges to “deactivate” chapters of the national group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for defending Hamas following the Palestinian terrorist group’s invasion of Israel and massacre of civilians earlier this month.
Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, issued the order on Tuesday in a written memo to school presidents within the system.
About 1,400 people were killed in Hamas’ terror onslaught against Israel on Oct. 7 — the deadliest single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas referred to the invasion as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
In his memo, Rodrigues referenced how, following the massacre, the National Students for Justice in Palestine organization called for a “Day of Resistance” on college campuses across the US, distributing propaganda aimed at demonizing Israel and seemingly defending Hamas. As part of the efforts to promote its campaign, SJP issued a “toolkit” to supporters that in part referred to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as “the resistance” and stated: “Palestinian students in exile are part of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”
The State University System of Florida has at least two institutions with active National SJP chapters, according to Rodrigues. Citing state law that deems the knowing provision of material support to a terrorist group as a felony, he said that the two chapters cannot continue operating.
“These chapters exist under the headship of the National Students for Justice in Palestine, who distributed a toolkit identifying themselves as part of the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” the memo stated. “Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated. These two student chapters may form another organization that complies with Florida state statutes and university policies. The two institutions should grant these two chapters a waiver for the fall deadlines, should reapplication take place.”
The measure will affect SJP chapters at the University of North Florida, located in Jacksonville, and Florida State University, located in Tallahassee.
Support for terrorism against Israeli civilians among SJP chapters is not new. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for example, reported that SJP expressed on at least 10 occasions last year admiration for Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terror group. She is known for previously hijacking two planes.
Other SJP chapters at the University of Texas, Dallas, New York University Law School, and the University of Massachusetts posted violent images containing PLFP’s logo and guns. In January, the University of Chicago’s SJP chapter honored Khairy Alqam — who murdered seven Israeli civilians exiting a synagogue in Jerusalem — in a collage titled “Honoring the Martyrs.”
DeSantis has taken previous steps to crack down on anti-Israel activity in Florida.
In Dec. 2021, his office issued a statement advising Florida State University not to allow the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), with which it was an institutional partner, from operating a boycott of Israel on its campus. The association at the time was considering — and later approved — an endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
In 2016, when DeSantis was a state representative, he supported legislation that prohibited the state’s pension funds from investing in companies that boycott Israel. DeSantis said BDS “is a form of economic warfare against Israel that is rooted in antisemitism and seeks to delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state.”
Meanwhile:
California university offers extra credit for marching against Israel
By Mindy Rubenstein, World Israel News,
The University of California Berkeley is under fire after the school approved an instructor’s plan to offer extra credit to students who participate in an anti-Israel march or watch an anti-Israel documentary.
Graduate student Victoria Huynh, who is pursuing her Ph.D. in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, sent an email to students enrolled in her course, “Asian American Communities and Race Relations,” about the anti-Israel extra-credit options.
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Israel’s 20th Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Israeli ground forces operated within the northern Gaza Strip overnight, attacking multiple Hamas targets before withdrawing, according to an IDF statement on Israel's Army Radio, describing it as the biggest incursion of the current war. Video of the action issued by the military showed armored vehicles proceeding through a sandy border zone. A bulldozer is seen leveling part of a raised bank, tanks firing shells, and explosions are seen near or amid a row of damaged buildings.
The military statement posted online said the incursion was carried out "in preparation for the next stages of combat", a possible reference to the large-scale invasion that Israeli leaders have threatened as part of the war to destroy Hamas. Israel began localized ground incursions on Sunday as the war entered its third week. Israel's Army Radio described today's incursion as the biggest yet.
Hamas launched a massive barrage of rockets toward central and southern Israel on Wednesday evening, lightly wounding six people, following several days with fewer missiles fired from Gaza. A rocket crashed into a home in Rishon LeZion south of Tel Aviv, lightly wounding three people — a woman in her 40s hurt by shards of glass, a man around 80 wounded by shrapnel and a woman, 75, being treated for smoke inhalation, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
In northern Israel, the military said air defense systems intercepted a surface-to-air missile launched from Lebanon at an Israeli military drone on Wednesday night, amid continued exchanges with the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group and allied Palestinian factions.
Discussion continues about providing humanitarian aid to Gaza. The medical infrastructure there is complaining that they are running out of fuel for their generators. However, video supplied by the IDF shows ten full fuel storage tanks under Hamas’ control, that combined, hold half a million liters of fuel. But it appears that Hamas is holding that in reserve for military use rather than supply the hospitals with the much-needed fuel that could save Palestinian lives.
Earlier today opposition leader Yair Lapid opined that the present government is not functioning at the level needed to properly address the challenges before us. He then presented eight recommendations for the government to consider, which he said were formed in consultation with experts and former government officials using experience gained in previous conflicts and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He listed (a) communicating with the public more frequently; (b) improving care of evacuated citizens, in part by moving delivery of services to local authorities, aided by the government; (c) aiding small and medium-sized businesses and independent contractors called up to reserve duty; (d) expanding financial protections for reservists and frontline residents; (e) increasing educational services, especially for evacuated children; (f) broadening mental health services; (g) increasing personal protection, in part by putting armed community security organizations in each Israeli town; and (h) closing unneeded government ministries and diverting coalition funds to the war effort.
The opposition leader identified eight superfluous government ministries as well, saying, “They are ministries that don’t need to exist, especially not in wartime.” He suggested they be closed and their budgets diverted to local authorities and the war effort. There has been no reaction as yet from the leadership.
In a related story, US college campuses continue to be the hotbed of anti-Israel activity that has been developing for a number of years. At George Washington University in Washington, DC anti-Israel messages were projected onto the exterior of a campus building. The messages — including “Glory to Our Martyrs,” “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now,” and “Free Palestine From The River To The Sea” — appeared on the side of a library building for two hours. Photos shared by the student newspaper and the watchdog group StopAntisemitism showed that the messages spanned several floors and could be read clearly at a distance. Video appeared to show masked students projecting the images from the street, arguing with university police over whether their actions were in violation of campus rules, before being ticketed. And similar acts have appeared on other campuses as well.
As we approach three full weeks of war, the population of Israel remains energized, has ramped up a massive volunteer network to deal with those displaced from the north and the south, and developed a framework of psychological services to address the trauma of living in war zone. All of us living here are steadfast in our determination to come out of this stronger and more united than ever. With God’s help, may that objective be realized to the fullest.
Sherwin Pomerantz has lived in Israel for 40 years, is CEO of Atid EDI Ltd., a international business development consultancy. He is also the Founder and Chair of the American State Offices Association, former National President of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel and a past Chairperson of the Board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.
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My Alma Mater:
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In September, the University of Pennsylvania’s leadership allowed the Palestine Writes Festival to go on as scheduled on its campus. After backlash from Jewish leaders, Penn President M. Elizabeth Magill condemned the speakers (such as Roger Waters) with histories of making anti-Israel statements but also reiterated Penn’s commitment to “the free exchange of ideas.
An anti-Semitic vandalism incident at Penn’s Hillel house followed. Then the festival went on and proved to be as much an Israel-bashing session as a celebration of Palestinians. And then Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and the university didn’t comment on it until Oct. 10.
After all that, some powerful Penn supporters — former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, billionaire investor Marc Rowan and Main Line-based billionaire venture capitalist David Magerman — among others, began announcing plans to divest from Penn or calls for Magill and board of trustees chair Scott L. Bok to step down.
Finally, on Oct. 20, someone spray-painted “The Jews R Nazis” on a building next to Penn’s AEPi house.
What is going on here?
Vahan Gureghian, who is not Jewish, believes Magill is to blame. Gureghian stepped down from his role on Penn’s board of trustees earlier this month. He had served on the board since 2009 and under two previous presidents: Amy Gutmann (2004-2022) and Wendell Pritchett (interim in 2022). Magill started in her position in July 2022.
Gureghian said the following about Magill in an interview:
“An operation like this with 45-50,000 employees and significant revenue is one effectively that the person at the top is running a decent-size corporation. On an ongoing basis, Penn has controversial issues. But to take this job on, you have to be able to deal with those issues. You have to be able to make good decisions. You have to consult the board and the members before making a controversial decision.”
Ronald Lauder, the Jewish billionaire, Penn grad and chairman emeritus of the Estee Lauder Cos., visited Magill “several weeks” before the festival, according to Gureghian. He told her, “This is a terrible idea to have it. These people are anti-Semitic. They want to destroy Israel.” Gureghian said that Lauder offered research about various speakers that backed up his claims.
“If you’re a person of substance at a university and someone comes to you with that research or information, you have to think hard about not canceling it,” Gureghian said. “At the very least, you have to pick up the phone and call five or six or seven people. ‘Ron came to me. This is what this looks like.’ You knew two or three weeks before the event that this was going to be a problem.”
Gureghian also said that Lauder was “not someone to be taken lightly” since he’s a “significant donor.” Gureghian is not sure who, if anyone, Magill spoke to about Lauder’s warning.
“When you talk to the Jewish members of the board, when you say to them, what do you think of this? Is this going to be a problem in the Jewish community? I guarantee you they would’ve said yes,” Gureghian explained. “That’s a huge mistake to be made by someone of this magnitude and of this stature.”
“You have people here on the board who in every walk of life have been extremely successful. You can’t spend 15-20 minutes on the phone to just check something out?” he added.
The crowd on opening night of the Palestine Writes Festival in Irvine Auditorium at Penn on Sept. 22 (Photo by Jarrad Saffren)
Penn’s director of media relations, Ron Ozio, provided Magill’s statement in response to the criticisms.
“Alumni are important members of the Penn community. I hear their anger, pain and frustration and am taking action to make clear that I stand, and Penn stands, emphatically against the terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel and against antisemitism,” she said. “As a university, we support and encourage the free exchange of ideas, along with a commitment to the safety and security of our community and the values we share and work to advance. Penn has a moral responsibility to combat antisemitism and to educate our community to recognize and reject hate in all its forms. I’ve said we should have communicated faster and more broadly about where we stand, but let there be no doubt that we are steadfast in our beliefs.”
Gureghian believes that, in the end, the decision on the festival was not even Magill’s to make.
“When it’s something of this controversy, this is a board decision,” he said.
The former board member also thinks that more and more donors will “pull their funds” unless “a change in leadership” is made.
“The university is probably the biggest developer, the biggest employer, the biggest everything, in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. I care about that,” Gureghian said. “I don’t want to see that No. 1 entity take a hit in any way. I don’t want to see some individual that’s been there 18 months screw up the apple cart.”
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It is about time:
+++
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Morris: Liberal Secular Jews Growing Disillusioned with the Left
By Emma-Jo Morris
A deluge of stories and columns have been published throughout Western media with the same refrain over the past week: indifference among those on the left after the barbaric attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians has liberal Jews taking a second look at their political alliances.
The Times of London, the New York Times, Tablet, and the Free Press (founded by former Times editor Bari Weiss) have all, in the past week, featured pieces detailing how secular Jews in the West — generational liberals who were always supportive of myriad social justice causes championed by progressives — are shocked and repulsed by their political “allies'” dismissal of the violence inflicted on their families in Israel by despicable anti-Semite terrorists.
Western secular Jews have long been left-wing; their culture is socially liberal, humanist, intellectual, generous, and communal, which has always led them into the arms of various left-wing parties in the countries where they live. They have historically played key roles in civil rights movements, have been some of the most prominent voices for civil liberties, and, more recently, have, by and large, been supportive of the modern iterations of left-wing social movements.
But after October 7, as every Jew in the diaspora went through collective loss, grief, and mourning, Jews watched virtually every left-wing institution and personality either dismiss or justify the atrocities performed by Hamas. They witnessed their people, their families, being raped, kidnapped, mutilated, and murdered in the most sadistic ways they could never imagine, and their left-wing “allies” lining up behind the perpetrators — because “resistance” against “colonialists” and “occupiers” is justified.
American Jews watched Black Lives Matter release statements in support of Hamas — a genocidal pseudo-government with a stated purpose of murdering every Jew “from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea” — pledging “solidarity” with “resistance” of “57 years of settler colonialism and apartheid.”
American Jews watched climate activist wonderkid Greta Thunberg declare she “[stands] with Gaza,” calling for “an immediate ceasefire, justice, and freedom for Palestinians” while scores of Jewish innocents remain hostage.
American Jews watched A-list celebrity activists bemoan the “bombs [that] have been dropped on Gaza” after reserving comment on the torture of thousands of Jews some days earlier.
American Jews watched schools from the northeast to the west coast hold protests and produce letters exclaiming this atrocity — the pure horror they had just streamed on social media — “didn’t happen in a vacuum.”
American Jews watched their political heroes, like former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, hurriedly withdraw their initial backing of Israel and shift it over to Gaza — lest “islamophobia” be borne out of Israeli support.
Pro-Palestinian Protesters Spit On and Attack Israel Supporters, Get Pepper Sprayed
And now Jews are looking around at all the people they always stood with and realizing, in their moment of tragedy, they are alone. Because Gaza is a bad place to live with an oppressed population, and Israel is a nice place to live with a thriving population— no further analysis, as the myopic and shallow modern leftist ideological binary will not allow for it.
In a story headlined “On Israel, Progressive Jews Feel Abandoned by Their Left-Wing Allies,” the New York Times wrote:
Progressive Jews who have spent years supporting racial equity, gay and transgender rights, abortion rights and other causes on the American left — including opposing Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank — are suddenly feeling abandoned by those who they long thought of as allies.
“Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists,” Konstantin Kisin wrote in a column for the Free Press, continuing:
The reaction to the attacks—from outwardly pro-Hamas protests to the mealy-mouthed statements of college presidents, celebrities, and CEOs—has exploded the comforting stories many on the center-left have told themselves about progressive identity politics.
“It’s terrifying to feel the coldness of one’s friends. You feel the walls closing in, the floor dropping from beneath you,” Boaz Munro wrote in a Tablet column titled “Jews of the Left.” “Every psychological handhold you lean on (‘America is safe,’ ‘Israel is safe,’ ‘the Nazis are dead’) turns to sand, and you fall down.”
“What is clearer than ever is that the governing classes of far too many western institutions want Israel to fail,” Times of London columnist Juliet Samuel mused, adding:
They want it to fail physically, as they state with increasing brazenness. But just as importantly for their fragile worldview, they want it to fail morally. They need this failure because without it, all their nonsensical, convoluted political theories, all the ridiculous victim hierarchies and weird psychological complexes projected on to the world, make no sense and will be revealed as the worthless, nasty nest of guilt and prejudice they really are.
Thread these columns together, and a story is told of Western Jews realizing that the ideology of the left — fundamentally premised on every interaction being based on a corrupt hierarchy of power and a crusade to rearrange that hierarchy by any means necessary — is not “liberalism” as they knew it. And realizing that this ideological framework is an inhospitable place for a civilization whose history is characterized by thriving in the most hostile environments and making something of themselves despite all odds — the arc of Jews over generations, throughout history, across the world. Now, that triumphant arc, written in the DNA of every Jew, the manifestation of “am yisrael chai,” is oppressive and evil.
Faced with the question of antisemitism on the left in the past, many Jews dismissed the critique because antisemitism has no political ideology. That is true. However, what left-wing Jews are realizing now is that despite antisemitism having no political ideology, the left has embraced, rationalized, and mainstreamed it, whereas the right has marginalized it and advocates policies to curtail its effects.
The mainstream right abides by the values of Enlightenment: it outright rejects collectivism and identity politics; it embraces a culture of individual merit; it promotes American values of tolerance and freedom of expression and association; and perhaps most importantly, it insists on sane border policy that emphasizes discretion based on how newcomers will contribute to society and culture.
Those ideas are no longer found in the mainstream left, as liberal Jews realize their parties would mindlessly reduce everything and everyone to a Marxist model. And now liberal Jews are facing a reckoning with the left and their place in it, as they experience firsthand what they grew up reading from Hannah Arendt:
“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”
Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at tejmorris@breibart.com or follow her on Twitter.
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Obama told us Erdogan was the world leader that was his closest friend.
+++
ZOA Condemns Turkish Pres. Erdogan’s Horrific Comments Blaming Israel and Lauding Hamas as Liberators
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA’s Director of Research & Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement:
ZOA strongly condemns Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s outrageous, libelous accusations against Israel and her supporters in the West yesterday; and Erdogan’s absurd and despicable claim that the Muslim Arab Hamas group is not a terror organization. Clearly Erdogan and Fidan are Jew-hating, Israel-haters.
Erdogan falsely accused Israel of perpetrating “murder and mental illness” and an “intentional massacre” in Gaza; condemned the West of “hypocrisy” and perpetrating “the massacre and the destruction taking place in Gaza” by “providing unlimited support for Israel”; and absurdly and insanely and anti-Semitically claimed, against all evidence and against any semblance of reason, that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, 'mujahideen' [fighters for the Muslim faith] waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”
Similarly, Fidan said that an Israeli ground invasion would turn the violence there into a "massacre” and accused countries supporting Israel of being "accomplices" to Israel’s “crimes.” Erdogan also canceled a planned visit to Israel, using the pretext that Israeli PM Netanyahu “took advantage of our [Turkey’s] good intentions.”
ZOA praises and agrees with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ response to Turkey: Muslim Arab “Hamas is a despicable terrorist organization worse than ISIS that brutally and intentionally murders babies, children, women and the elderly, takes civilians hostage, and uses its own people as human shields. Even the Turkish president's attempt to defend the terrorist organization and his inciting words will not change the horrors that the whole world has seen and the unequivocal fact: Hamas = ISIS."
ZOA National President Morton Klein also stated:
“After the unspeakable horrors perpetrated by Muslim Arab Hamas on innocent Jewish men, women, children and babies on October 7th, and decades of deadly terrorist attacks that Hamas has perpetrated on Jewish civilians since Hamas’ inception, it is utterly sickening for any world leader to defend Hamas, insanely claiming that Hamas is not a terror organization, or to blame Israel. The United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada, Egypt, Israel, Japan, the UK and the UAE all designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. The Hamas charter quotes the Hadith to the Muslim Koran calling for the murder of every Jew on earth (Article 7) and for the Jewish State of Israel’s destruction.
“Just eight months ago, when Turkey was hit with a major earthquake, Israel sent a rescue team to Turkey. The Israeli team rescued Turkish babies and many others from the rubble. Erdogan even gave the head of the Israeli rescue mission a certificate of appreciation for helping Turkey in its hour of need. How soon this disgusting ingrate Erdogan forgot!
“Israel rescues Muslim Turkish babies, while Hamas slaughters, tortures and beheads them.”
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Cruz Exposes Biden’s Iran Man: Spies in the White House!
by Staff Reports
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) bravely stepped up to the plate this weekend, appearing on Fox News to shed light on the Biden Administration’s shocking involvement with Iranian spies infiltrating our own government. Yes, you read that right – Iranian spies, right here in the United States!
Cruz wasted no time bringing the truth to the American people. He exposed one of the alleged “Iranian sympathizers,” a chief of staff in the Department of Defense, who had unrestricted access to classified materials. Can you believe it? Someone with such questionable loyalties getting their hands on our nation’s secrets? It’s truly alarming!
But who is this mysterious individual? None other than Rob Malley, Joe Biden’s chief negotiator for Iran. It’s no surprise that Malley is a fervent supporter of the disastrous Obama-Iran nuclear deal. Cruz made it crystal clear that Malley’s conduct has been so egregious that even the FBI is investigating him. And don’t forget, his security clearance was suspended earlier this year, a glaring indication of just how bad things have gotten under this radical White House.
Malley’s involvement in the Biden Administration’s Iran policy has raised eyebrows among GOP lawmakers, particularly in light of recent events in Israel. Some members of Congress have even had the good sense to refuse to attend classified briefings led by Malley, given his shady reputation. It’s clear that he cannot be trusted with our national security.
But wait, it gets worse. Cruz dropped a bombshell by revealing that three of Malley’s top advisers were Iranian operatives recruited and directed by the Iranian government. Yes, you heard that correctly. The very people advising Malley were answering to the Iranian foreign minister! Can we really trust someone who surrounds themselves with such dubious characters?
The seriousness of this situation prompted House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) to request documents and communications related to Malley from the State Department, while also demanding a staff-level briefing. They understand the urgency of addressing this threat to our national security and are taking action to hold the Biden Administration accountable.
It’s evident that there is an alarming lack of judgment and discernment within the White House when it comes to choosing individuals like Rob Malley to represent our nation’s interests. We cannot afford to have someone with questionable loyalties and connections to Iranian spies shaping our foreign policy. The American people deserve better.
It’s time for conservatives to stand tall against this administration’s dangerous flirtation with Iran. We must remain vigilant in exposing and opposing any efforts that compromise our national security. Ted Cruz is leading the charge, exposing the truth and demanding accountability. Let’s support him in this important fight for a safer and stronger America.
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Yes, Palestinian Arabs Overwhelmingly Support Hamas
By Morton A. Klein
At least 10 times since Oct. 7, President Biden has stated that the Muslim Arab terrorist group Hamas, “does not represent the Palestinian people,” or variations such as “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas,” and “Hamas does not represent the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.” Top Biden administration officials have repeated the same phrases.
But the Biden administration’s repeated statement isn’t true. In fact, Hamas overwhelmingly represents the Palestinian people.
First, the Palestinians elected Hamas’ “Change and Reform” party in 2006 (the most recent legislative election), giving Hamas an overwhelming 74 seats. The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Fatah only won 45 seats. Parties representing other terror groups, e.g., PFLP’s “Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa” party, each won two to four seats. PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas has not held elections for the past 17 years to avoid losing again to Hamas. And last year, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians rallied in the streets to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Hamas.
Moreover, Hamas terror attacks on Israelis increase Palestinian support for Hamas. For example, Palestinian support for Hamas increased dramatically after Hamas launched 4,500 rockets at Israel in May 2021.
Second, Gazan civilians actively participated in, aided, abetted, and celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre.
“Ordinary” Gazan civilian workers in Israel (thousands of whom were allowed into Israel due to the Biden administration’s pressure) collected detailed intelligence on every home and citizen in southern Israeli towns and drew maps for Hamas to easily locate Jewish nurseries and families to murder and kidnap.
Then, after the first wave of Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,400 Jews, huge waves of “ordinary” Gazan civilians, armed with knives and screaming “Allahu Akbar,” flooded into southern Israel, and joined in the Hamas massacres and kidnappings. Mobs of Gazan civilians killed and gang-raped innocent Jews, chopped off innocent Jews’ heads, took hostages, entered and burned down massacred Jews’ homes, and ransacked and looted everything in sight — televisions, automobiles, jewelry, children’s bicycles, etc.
Israeli Telegram Channel South First Responders reported: “The assault on Southern Israel was not carried out exclusively by Hamas. It began with the entry of hundreds of heavily armed terrorists and was followed by waves of Gazans who looted the communities.” The mayor of the regional council encompassing most of the Gaza border explained: “The second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave.”
Throngs of Gazan civilians then cheered the ghoulish site of Hamas parading bloodied, captured, and dead Jews’ bodies through the streets. Gazans beat the Jews as they passed by.
Overjoyed Palestinian Arabs in Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) also cheered the massacre, dancing in the streets. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Palestinian Arabs routinely joyously celebrate when Arab terrorists murder Jewish children.
Third, if Hamas really didn’t represent the Palestinian people, there would have been at least some uprising against Hamas. (Look at Iran!) But no one in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority rose up or spoke out against Hamas’ atrocities. No one showed an ounce of humanity toward the slaughtered Jewish families and babies.
Fourth, numerous polls demonstrate that Palestinian Arabs in Judea/Samaria and Gaza overwhelmingly support Hamas’ “aspiration” to murder Israelis.
When the Palestinian Center for Polling and Survey Research in Ramallah’s (PCPSR) June 2023 poll asked: “What has been the most positive thing or the best thing that has happened to the Palestinian people since the Nakba?” (Israel’s rebirth 75 years ago), virtually every single “positive or best thing” that Palestinians and Gazans cited involved forming terror groups and murdering Jews.
The largest percentage (38 percent in Gaza; 24 percent of all Palestinians) said that the “single positive or best thing” was the Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s establishment and participation in “armed struggle” (killing Jews); 21 percent said that the “single positive and best thing” was the first and second intifadas (the terror wars in which Palestinian Arabs murdered or maimed 10,000 Jews in suicide bombings, etc.); and 18 percent said the PLO’s (terror organization) establishment.
The same June 2023 poll found that 79 percent of Gazans (71 percent of all Palestinian Arabs) favored forming even more armed terror groups, e.g., Lion’s Den and Jenin Battalion. These armed groups include Hamas, Fatah, and PIJ terrorists, and carried out numerous deadly terror attacks against Jews over the past year.
Further, 80 percent of Palestinian Arabs oppose surrendering armed groups’ members and weapons to the PA; and 86 percent (falsely) said the PA does not even have the right to arrest armed terror groups’ members to prevent attacks against Israel.
The PCPSR March 2023 poll found that 71 percent of Palestinian Arabs supported Palestinian terrorists shooting to death two Israeli brothers who simply drove by on a road near Huwara.
The PCPSR September 2019 poll found that 80.3 percent of Gazans, and 61 percent of all Palestinian Arabs supported the bombing tactic that murdered 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb and seriously wounded Rina’s father and brother. PFLP Arab terrorists (who were working for European governments) planted an IED near a popular spring in Samaria and remotely detonated the IED when they saw Rina’s family hiking there.
Thus, when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh praised Rina Shnerb’s murder as a “heroic act,” and when the murderer’s mother said that her “greatest achievement was giving birth to a hero,” they spoke for the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs.
And the PCPSR December 2015 poll (taken during the deadly “knife intifada”) found that 85 percent of Gazans (and 67 percent of all Palestinian Arabs) supported stabbing attacks on Israelis.
Unfortunately, Hamas does indeed represent the overwhelming mass of Palestinian Arabs and their genocidal aspirations.
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HOOVER DAILY:
The Threat To Freedom Of Expression At American Universities With Stephen Haber |
| by Stephen Haber via PolicyEd The relationship between faculty and students in the pursuit of truth is vital to American society, but restrictions on language, anonymous bias reporting, and required diversity statements undermine higher learning. Eager to protect students from discomfort, university bureaucracies have prioritized ideological conformity and self-censorship over critical thinking and the pursuit of truth. Academic inquiry and the pursuit of truth may be uncomfortable, but it is necessary to preserve what makes our higher learning institutions great. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Biden, stop loving Israel. Your love is killing it. +++ Biden Loves Israel to Death He knows better than Israel what Israel needs. by DOV FISCHER I wanted to be a rabbi all my life, since I was a boy. There are many reasons, extraneous to this article. But I was “called” to clergy. When I wedded in the 25-year marriage, doomed from its first day to eventual divorce, I soon enough encountered a terrible challenge that I was not prepared for, too young to handle properly, and that ruined some of my life and detoured some of my dreams. I had a new father-in-law who was dead set on steering me away from my calling, to refocus me on aspiring to become a money machine who would make lots of bucks. Go into business. Open a store. Become a lawyer, an accountant, an actuary. Make lots of money, and then think of all the good you could do by donating charitably to your favorite rabbis. “Dov, I am urging you to leave your rabbinic path because I care about you. I want what’s good for you. Follow my advice. I am older, wiser. You are too much involved to see the big picture from a distance. I know what’s best for you. Leave the rabbinate and focus on making money.” So I went to law school and became a successful attorney, et cetera. The thing is, I never made peace with having left the rabbinate. The moment my divorce was final a quarter century later, I embarked on a path to exit law practice and return to being a full-time rabbi, with a side gig as an adjunct professor of law (because I love teaching). The transition saved my life. Soon after, I met Ellen of blessed memory, the love of my life, and I have lived happily ever after, even blessed with a wonderful new life love after glioblastoma took Ellen. I share this because I think back to it as I watch Joe Biden love Israel to death. First, though I will vote for his Republican opponent in 2024, I am delighted to recognize that he truly has proven better than 90 percent of his party, an octogenarian among the last of the dying breed of old-time John F. Kennedy–Daniel Moynihan–Henry “Scoop” Jackson Democrats whose liberalism was moderate, who were unapologetic capitalists and bold anti-communists, who were compassionate without being progressive or woke, and who loved Israel deeply as the Middle East’s vanguard of American-style Judeo-Christian values. They saw Israel as a Western democracy amid cutthroat oligarchs, tyrants, and generals. They saw how it had fought its way into freedom by leading the world in anti-colonialism, driving out British imperialist colonialists who claimed ownership everywhere on the globe. It was Israel’s example, by its fighting anti-colonialist underground composed of the Irgun, the Lechi, and the Haganah, that inspired other peoples to free themselves from the shackles of colonialism. Democrats from the 1960s to 1980s loved Israel. Joe Biden came of political age during those years. I met him in 1985 (another story!), and I sat in the front row listening to him deliver one of the strongest pro-Israel speeches I ever heard. Sure, I knew even then that he was corrupt, but there was something in his words that brought — well, not a thrill up my leg, but a sense that some of this really was honest, that this junior senator from Delaware had Israel in his bones and never would let it fall on his watch. I never imagined he someday would be president of the United States. I still don’t. Joe is a vestige of a different time. Today’s Democrats will not expel people like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar whose language evokes memories of Nazis past. The Ocasios and Omars and Tlaibs and Cori Bushes push today’s Democrat agenda. They are untouchable Democrats. The Jamaal Bowmans know where the fire alarms are. So Biden is the best of the worst, and Israel may soon rue when his day is gone because the others on the bench mostly are worms and snakes: the South Bender, Pete; tribal princess Elizabeth (“Standing Bull”) Warren; Communist Bernie — the whole lot of them. Biden is the best of them on the question of Israel. He loves Israel. To death. Biden reminds me of that awful first father-in-law. He “only wanted the best for [me].” He knew better than I what was best for me. He had all the answers: I would be happiest if I would live to make money. He knew my needs better than I did. (By the way, non sequitur: Question: What’s the difference between in-laws and outlaws?) And that is Biden when dealing with Israel. (By the way, the answer: Outlaws are wanted.) Israel wants to crush Hamas and finally put an end to them. And, with G-d’s help, also to free the 200 hostages, among them dozens of Americans, who Hamas seized. Israel knows Hamas. They have had Hamas on their tail for 18 years since Ariel Sharon foolishly abandoned Gaza to the Arabs to let them have self-determination. The bloodthirsty Gazans responded by freely selecting Hamas to lead them to perpetual jihad. Israel has fought some six wars with them in the past two decades. She has tried every nice way. She has allowed Qatar to send Gaza hundreds of millions. She has allowed 17,000 Gazans each and every day to enter Israel and work inside the Jewish country for better wages than are conceivable under Hamas. When Hamas began a campaign of shooting incendiary balloons across the border, igniting fires in Israel’s agricultural fields, she barely responded. Some even wrongly believe that Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu was so gracious to Hamas because he had a secret strategy to boost them over Abu Mazen (“Mahmoud Abbas”) and the “Palestinian Authority.” Israel finally has figured out that there is only one way to assure that, like the vow at Masada, Southern Israel shall not fall again: destroy Hamas. Crush them. Annihilate them. Exterminate them. By all means, do not target civilians for revenge. But this time, if civilians are in the way, then they will be the collateral damage of war. Hamas hides their weapons and themselves in hospitals, schools, residential apartment buildings, mosques, and ambulances. They do it, essentially daring the Israelis: “We have made it impossible for you to put us out of business unless you have the stomach to drop bombs that also will kill thousands of civilians. We know you do not have that stomach as we do. You people do not behead. You do not methodically slaughter babies. You do not rape women. You are wimps. We dare you.” Until now, they kind-of have been right. But the Sh’mini Atzeret massacre has changed things. Israel now is aerial-bombing the daylights out of Hamas in Gaza to prepare the ground for an incursion of 300,000 soldiers who will fight house-to-house if they have to, as they have done in Jenin in Samaria (the “West Bank”). As part of that pre-invasion softening, Israel has clamped down and begun a siege: no electricity, no fuel, no food. More and more Israelis also are demanding: no water, no medications, no nothing until those hostages are freed. And along comes Biden to Israel. Isn’t the L-rd G-d King of the Universe amazing? For three years, Netanyahu very publicly begged Biden for an invitation to the White House to meet, as do so many other world leaders. And for three years Biden snubbed Bibi and refused to invite him or meet him. So circumstances unfolded such that Biden found himself having to leave America and fly to Israel — during wartime — to meet with Bibi. Interesting. So Biden comes and tells Netanyahu and his people how much he loves Israel. But, like that father-in-law, he knows better than the Israelis what they need to do. They need to let in food. And supplies. And $100 million in “humanitarian assistance” that ultimately will be used to build humanitarian missiles, humanitarian underground tunnels for humanitarian terrorists to cross into Israel, humanitarian schools and summer camps where kids will be taught to hate and murder Jews, humanitarian knives and wire cutters, humanitarian paragliding equipment, and even humanitarian smartphones with which to film and photograph for social media the humanitarian slaughter, humanitarian rape, and humanitarian infanticide and baby decapitations that will follow. Biden knows better than Israel what Israel needs — like, yeah, a “two-state solution.” That is just what Israel needs: A country on its third border, the east, that is identical to Hamas Gaza on its south and Hezbollah Southern Lebanon on its north. A “Palestine” that will have Fatah and Hamas terrorists crossing into the towns and cities of Israel’s main population centers of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa to butcher, rape, and behead Jews. A “Palestine” that will shoot thousands of rockets and missiles into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Haifa and Hadera, Raanana and Herzliya, leaving the whole country like a nightmarish shooting gallery with missiles flying all day from everywhere, forcing an entire nation to live in tunnels. The accompanying imperative to remove 1 million — again, 1 million — Jews from their homes in the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria, relocate those million Jews overnight in an area the size of New Jersey, set those million up with jobs, infrastructure, schools, and all. Biden loves Israel and thinks he knows what is best for Israel: end the siege, let in supplies, allow the $100 million infusion of U.S. taxpayer money, set up a third Hamas-Hezbollahstan dirt hole, uproot and expel 1 million Jews from their homes and relocate them. But Israel knows that such love will lead to her end. She cannot afford to be loved to death by Joe Biden, the man who loves Israel so passionately that he approved sending $6 billion to Iran for them to spend on international terror against Israel and America. They know, with appreciation for his good intentions, that he will love Israel to death. When I was 23, I was inexperienced and unsure enough to let that father-in-law detour my life by pressing me: “I know what is best for you because all I care about is your happiness.” By the year 2000, I had learned enough about life such that no one ever would dare try that on me again. Israel is even older: 75 years old. She, too, has learned much about life. She signed the disastrous 1993 Oslo Agreement that gave Arafat and the PLO its own polity, with control over their own television and newspapers and radio and schools and all, and they responded by creating a permanent terror nest. She offered Arafat 97 percent of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) plus additional land within pre-1967 Israel itself, and he rejected it and launched the Second Intifada. She withdrew from Southern Lebanon unilaterally for peace; she got Hezbollah in return. She withdrew from Gaza unilaterally and gave it to the Arabs for peace. They responded with Hamas. This time, no dice, Joe. Give the Iran $6 billion to Israel for defense and reparations — yeah, reparations. The Squad should love that: reparations. And stop loving Israel to death. Rabbi Fischer’s two memorial programs and prayer services for Israel in the face of the Hamas–Gaza massacre may be found on YouTube here and here. Because they contain video and photos taken by Hamas at the massacre, YouTube is restricting viewing of the service exclusively to individuals over 18. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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