Israelis refuse to be erased
The U.N.’s Francesca Albanese again engaged in the vilest anti-Semitism, but this time, Israel pushed back.
It’s time to wake up: We are faced with a wave of catastrophic antisemitism, worse than any since the 1930s, a complete collapse of a society supposedly dedicated to human rights. The wave has resulted in violence against people of all ages and walks of life, against property and schools, creating a totalitarianism of hate and prejudice.
In Italy, where I was born and am visiting, the courageous honorary consul of Israel in Florence, Marco Carrai—a Christian—is being ruthlessly persecuted, besieged by demonstrations and abuse both physical and rhetorical, and accused of remaining silent “on the massacre of children in Gaza.” He is the president of a children’s hospital, yet a terrorist ready to throw a Molotov cocktail at the consulate has been discovered by police. The “demonstrators” have made no mention of the Israeli children massacred by Hamas. Many of them openly state that the massacres never happened at all.
Anti-Semitism in Italy is becoming a flood. According to the Fondazione CDEC-Observatory on Antisemitism, Italy saw 454 anti-Semitic incidents in 2023, compared to 241 in 2022. In Italy’s leading daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was just accused by the secretary of the main left-wing party Elly Schlein of preparing a “new massacre” in the Hamas stronghold of Rafah, as if destroying Hamas’s last redoubt were not a strategic objective but the target of Netanyahu’s sadistic obsessions.
Indeed, to the media, there is only this blood libel. The war that has been forced upon Israel by 13,000 missiles, the slaughter of 1,200 people, the rape and mutilation of women and children, the kidnapping of some 250 people and all the other atrocities that occurred in southern Israel on Oct. 7 do not exist. A war fought in 750 kilometers (about 465 miles) of tunnels against an Islamic Nazi group with 30,000 terrorists, weapons and weapons factories in civilian structures, command centers beneath the headquarters of the collaborationist U.N. agency UNRWA, and an entire population to use as a human shield; a population from which Hamas steals the so precious humanitarian supplies that were so demanded from Israel by all the world, and among whom the kidnapped are hidden.
What of the Israelis displaced from their kibbutzim, the families deprived of their loved ones, and the soldiers fighting without rest for months? They do not exist either. They are Jews, so they are erased. There is nothing else in the news, in politics, on the screens but the blood libel. Pure anti_Semitism everywhere.
Thankfully Israel is not allowing itself to be erased. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, for example, fought back when the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur (read collaborator) on “the occupied Palestinian territories,” Francesca Albanese, engaged in the vilest anti_Semitism. French President Emmanuel Macron, she said, was wrong to call the Oct. 7 massacre anti-Semitic. The massacre was, she raged, caused by Israeli oppression. It appears that she believes Israelis deserve to be murdered, raped, and kidnapped. Her cynicism and sadism know no bounds.
To Albanese, Israelis are nothing. Therefore, Katz has rightly banned her from entering the Israel she hates so much. To her, there is only the inestimable “suffering” of the Palestinians, which justifies anything and everything—even a generation of new Hitler's.
Katz demanded Albanese be fired, saying, “The time of Jewish silence in the face of such misrepresentations has passed. We must stand strong and vocal against such narratives.” This resolve in the face of Albanese’s racism was heartening and true.
He, like other Israelis and Jews, knows that the threat posed by anti-Semitism is global, as it was in Hitler’s time. No one understood this back then. We must ensure that they do so now.
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Biden: Too Demented to Be Found Guilty of Crimes But not too demented to be president?
by Victor Davis Hanson
Posted By Ruth King
https://www.frontpagemag.com/
Special Counsel Robert Hur just found Joe Biden was guilty of violating national security laws in removing classified documents— after examining then Senator and Vice President Biden’s some 15-year habit of removing classified files to his offices and residences, where they were stored in unsecured fashion.
Period. End of story.
Hur then, as a disinterested Special Counsel, not a local county prosecutor on a limited budget, logically would have indicted and prosecuted Biden. It really is a jury’s decision to determine whether Biden was guilty or innocent, or whether he is pardoned/exempted by reason of dementia.
It is not the role of Hur, as a prosecutor and advocate for the state, to imagine how difficult his case might be to prove someone so incapacitated like Biden was guilty, as Hur’s own research and investigations had otherwise indicated that he was.
Is mindset, intention, or mental status a normal consideration of violations of national security laws, or is it the act itself? So we are back to the James Comey defense:
Hillary was guilty but in Lord and Savior Comey’s judgement no jury would likely convict a presidential candidate of such stature of violating national security laws. (After her reprieve, Hillary immediately claimed such extenuating circumstances were proof of her innocence. And Biden in a nanosecond likewise claimed he is now exonerated too, as was the administration’s plan all along).
Finally note the following:
1) The Left, Hur, and others believe that someone who has lost his faculties and who would not be allowed to drive a semi-truck, teach a class, diagnose a patient, argue a case, wire a house, or cook a hamburger is nevertheless fit enough to run the United States of America.
2) Note this same old/same old shocking but predictable asymmetry. Trump is a mere four years younger than Biden. The left fixated on the fact that he recently confused Nikki Hayley with Nancy Pelosi. Are we then to expect Jack Smith to follow the precedent of his fellow special counsel Hur, who was likewise appointed by Biden administration AG Merrick Garland and thus to conclude that although Trump violated the law by removing files, he seemed too confused to indict, given the likelihood of a sympathetic jury?
3) Hur himself tried to preemptively defend himself from the obvious conclusion that he extended special considerations not to indict Biden in a manner Jack Smith did not to Trump. Yet he omits that there were key differences in the two cases:
Biden had no putative right, as did Trump as President, to declassify files he took home. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago walled and surveilled estate was far more secure than Biden’s rickety garage. Biden had stored files for over a decade not less than two years.
Biden’s attorneys came forward just days before Smith was appointed on November 18, 2022. So it was not altruism that prompted their confession after Biden’s years of secretly hiding such illegality, but rather fear that Trump would soon be hounded for a ”crime” of which Biden was found out to be long guilty.
So they went public to preempt that charge and falsely claim civic virtue. This is just more of a long, disgusting pattern of biased applications of the law: Jan 6 vs 2020 May to October deadlier and more violent riots; election denialism of Trump versus Stacey Abrams’s nonstop claims of being the real governor of Georgia; “insurrection” called for in Trump’s speech vs Kamala Harris’s threats that the 2020 riots (“protests”) would and should keep going; the Trump 2020 election gambit versus the 2016 Leftwing coordinated effort to leverage electors into renouncing their states’ popular vote mandates.
And so on.
No Department of Justice in our history has ever done more to undermine Americans’ confidence in the fair and equitable application of justice. This is not the America we grew up in.
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Israel’s 130th Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
On day 130 of the war IDF soldiers continued to operate in west Khan Yunis and push forward their offensive, while the soldiers of the 7th Armored Brigade killed over 30 terrorists in clashes in the city, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said earlier today. Paratroopers killed terrorists who attempted to hide themselves among the civilian population, and soldiers in the 414 Nesher Intelligence Battalion identified and killed terrorists carrying explosives on motorcycles. When one of the terrorists was spotted pointing a gun at an IDF vehicle, the soldiers reacted immediately and killed the terrorist.
Mossad Head David Barnea, Shin Bet Director Ronan Bar, and IDF Lt.-Gen. Nitzan Alon left Israel this morning for a meeting in Cairo with the US” CIA Director William J. Burns, Egyptian Intelligence Director Abbas Kamel, and the Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al-Thani. During the meeting, they will discuss efforts to free more hostages from Hamas captivity. Israel went there under urging from US President Biden who believe there remains potential for a negotiated hostage release deal.
UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese will be prohibited from entering Israel, Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Interior Minister Moshe Arbel said in a joint statement on Monday. The two ministers stated: "The era of Jews being silent is over. If the UN wants to return to being a relevant body, its leaders must publicly disavow the anti-Semitic words of the special envoy - and fire her immediately.
“Preventing her from entering Israel might remind her of the real reason why Hamas slaughtered babies, women, and adults.” The announcement comes following Albanese’s comments last week, which garnered severe backlash. Responding to French President Emmanuel Macron, who said the October 7 massacre was “the largest anti-Semitic massacre of our century,” Albanese stated in a post on X, formerly Twitter, “The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Egypt’s foreign minister dampened speculation that the country’s peace treaty with Israel would be at risk if Israel invaded Rafah, a city on Gaza’s border with Egypt. In recent days, Israeli officials have said they plan to send ground troops into Rafah as the next stage in our war against Hamas. More than a million Palestinians, the majority of Gaza’s population, have been sheltering in the city. Over the weekend, the Associated Press quoted two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat saying that a mass influx of Palestinians into Egypt could endanger the treaty. And on Saturday, Josep Borrell, the European Union foreign policy chief, said an Israeli invasion of Rafah would “lead to an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt.” But on Monday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry denied the AP report and said that Egypt would uphold the its accord with Israel, which the countries signed in 1979. “A peace agreement between Egypt and Israel already exists, which has been in effect for the past forty years, and we will continue it,” Shoukry said at a press conference in Slovenia, where he is on an official visit.
Future Leadership
Another hidden gem, as it were, of potential leadership in Israel is Dr. Zohar Raviv
Dr. Raviv is an internationally recognized Jewish thought-leader and educator, currently serving as the International VP of Educational Strategy for Taglit-Birthright Israel.
Raviv’s professional experience spans Israel, North America, South America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. He holds a BA in Land of Israel Studies from Bar-Ilan University, a Joint MA in Judaic Studies and Jewish Education from Brandeis University, as well as an MA in Near Eastern Studies and a PhD in Jewish Thought—both from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor).
Raviv plays a central role in shaping Birthright Israel’s educational philosophy, language, and pedagogy, and is a leading voice in some of the global paradigm shifts concerning contemporary Jewish identity, Israel-world Jewry relations, and the overall mandate of Jewish education in the 21st century.
You can get a sense of his thinking by looking at an op ed of his that appeared in today’s Jerusalem Post here…..
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/
He would bring a different perspective to government based on his in-depth experience with the next generation of diaspora Jews, many of whom may very well end up living here.
The IDF announced the death of another 7 soldiers yesterday bringing the total number of casualties since the start of the Gaza incursion to 230. That means a lot of parents, grandparents, children, spouses and siblings will be missing a relative for the rest of their own lives. There are, of course, no words of consolation that can be offered to the families of those who gave their lives to save Israel except to say how grateful and respectful are of the commitment, dedication and bravery of the fallen. Hopefully those who have been killed occupy a special place at the right hand of the One above. May their memories be blessed.
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Be Careful What You Seek
Israel faces continual roadblocks from lies and propaganda to surrealistic and pusillanimous advice from the president of the United States, to constant mass media and UN blame for everything under the sun and assorted hatred from American University professors and students.
Israel’s American frenemyHas the Biden administration been compromised throughinfiltration by Iran? |
Astonishingly, Israel has to fight right now to defend its existence not just against a line-up of mortal foes doing the bidding of Iran but also against the Jewish state’s most important ally, America.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who came to Israel this week to bully it into a ceasefire in Gaza, preposterously demanded a one-to-one private meeting with the Israel Defence Forces’ Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi.
At the meeting that took place instead with the war cabinet, Blinken was reportedly put out when Halevi said the war would continue for months because of the challenge mounted by the vast extent of Hamas’s underground military infrastructure.
Put out, that is, by Israel’s refusal to leave itself once again at the mercy of Hamas’s genocidal agenda.
Blinken then publicly bared America’s teeth. Although in his remarks alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog he was careful to say that he appreciated Israel’s emphasis on protecting civilians and providing humanitarian assistance, he gave vent at a press conference to accusations that echoed the malevolent demonisation of Israel around the world.
He declared “the daily toll that [Israel’s] military operations continue to take on innocent civilians remains too high”; urged Israel “to do more to help civilians”; and said although Israelis had been dehumanised, “that cannot be a license to dehumanise others. The overwhelming majority of people in Gaza had nothing to do with the attacks of October 7”.
This was all breathtakingly malign. Since the ratio of civilians to terrorists killed in Gaza is running at around two or three civilians to one terrorist — far lower than the proportion of civilians killed in U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan — on what conceivable basis is the number of Gaza civilian casualties “too high”?
Israel goes to greater lengths than any other country to protect enemy civilians in times of war. Moreover, from what’s been said by returning IDF soldiers and released hostages, the overwhelming majority of Gaza’s civilians supported the Hamas atrocities, in which many of them participated while others subjected the abducted Israelis to abuse and ill-treatment.
In addition, US President Joe Biden has issued an unprecedented executive order banning from America four Israeli residents of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria who are said to have committed violence against Palestinian Arabs.
One of these Israelis is in prison while the other three have legal actions pending against them. The order goes further, alleging that “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel and the broader Middle East region”.
This is an intolerable slander. While there is a problem with violent “hilltop youth” that must be dealt with, the vast majority of Israelis living in these territories are entirely peaceful. What’s more, the order makes no mention of the dozens of attacks on these Jews every day, some of them resulting in murder or injury.
The order is demonstrably unnecessary, a gesture of contempt towards Israeli justice and a gratuitous act of hostility and spite. Along with Blinken’s remarks, it will further fuel the truly dehumanising frenzy of slanderous Jew-hatred now consuming America and the west.
At the same time, American military aid has been essential to Israel’s war effort. So how is this apparent incoherence to be explained?
One factor is the imminence of the US presidential election and the pressure on Biden from pro-Palestinians screaming that he is aiding Israeli “genocide”. More disturbingly, the Biden administration needs to end this uproar in the Middle East because it wants to get back on track with its strategy of appeasing Iran.
The shocking fact is that, instead of regarding Iran as the mortal enemy not just of Israel but of America and the civilised world, the Biden administration is treating it as an asset that must be protected.
That’s why, despite dozens of Iranian-sponsored attacks on American facilities over the past four months, the United States has made only limp responses.
One consequence of that feebleness was last month’s drone attack by Iranian proxies in Jordan, which killed three US service members and injured more than 40. America’s strikes in response to that attack have mostly been laughable, with copious warnings ensuring that they largely hit only empty camps.
Not surprisingly, given this display of weakness, British and US vessels were this week targeted again by the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen even after the third round of retaliatory strikes.
Although a further US strike killed a senior member of the militia that reportedly mounted the Jordan attack, Iran will only be deterred by a strike on its own assets such as an oil refinery or an Iranian ship. Instead, Washington is issuing hand-on-heart declarations that Iran is not a target.
Astonishingly, the Biden administration even now hopes to renew the 2015 nuclear agreement. This was always a terrible deal since it would have enabled a legitimate Iranian nuclear weapon with only a few years’ delay while it funnelled billions into Tehran’s war chest through sanctions relief.
Ostensibly, the United States still hopes that a successor deal would bring Iran in from the cold. In fact it would empower Tehran still further, just as the Obama and Biden administrations have so catastrophically been doing.
So how can such a patently delusional policy be explained?
Some Bidenites clearly subscribe to the liberal fantasy that all conflict can be ended by negotiated compromise based on a universal drive for self-interest. Other members of the administration are viscerally hostile to Israel. Far worse, some of these have had links to Iran.
Last September, the news platform Semafor and the London-based émigré opposition outlet Iran International reported from thousands of leaked emails that Iran had infiltrated the Obama administration.
Three people in an Iranian network were aides to US envoy Robert Malley, who was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was removed last June following a still unexplained “mishandling of classified material.”
The leak also revealed that more than ten Iranian analysts in western think tanks, including Ali Vaez and Dina Esfandiary — two employees of the powerful International Crisis Group — were part of an influence network called the Iran Experts Initiative formed and guided by Tehran.
Last week, Iran International and Semafor further reported that, during the Obama administration, the Crisis Group formed a secret alliance with Iran which used it to lobby the US government throughout the negotiations leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal.
In 2002, Malley founded and directed the Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. After being appointed in February 2014 to the National Security Council’s staff under the Obama administration, he left the group but continued to use Vaez to send messages to Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Zarif, and sent Vaez to Vienna to meet Iranian officials. In January 2018, Malley became the Crisis Group’s president and CEO.
The leaked materials showed that within a month of his return to government in 2021, Malley helped infiltrate Ariane Tabatabai, who was associated with the Iranian network as an agent of influence, into the US State Department to assist him in his negotiations with Iran.
Tabatabai then moved to the Pentagon, where even today she still serves as chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defence for Special Operations, Christopher Maier—what’s more, in an office that oversees hostage recovery.
Anti-Israel protests against Biden have given the impression that his administration is on Israel’s side. America’s Jewish leaders need to start telling the American people that “Genocide Joe” is putting the United States and the west at ever greater risk and is actually helping those who intend the genocide of the Jews.
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How will President Biden navigate the growing turmoil as the nation watches on?
It's a pivotal moment that could define or destroy a presidency.
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