Thursday, May 9, 2024

216th Day. lastmemo Before Vacation. More/Lots More.

Last memo before we leave Saturday for N Litchfield Beach Vacation.
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Charlie was one our family's dearest and most respected  friends and my father loved having him in the firm in the role of, "Of Counsel;."  Charlie loved playing tennis and did so  until he was well into  his late 80's.

My mother loved his wife, Bernadine.
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GUEST COLUMNIST
THE STUNNING SECRET OF MOUNTAIN BROOK’S FIRST MAYOR
MAY 7, 2024 DAVID SHER 8 COMMENTS
Today’s guest columnist is Frank McPhillips.

Charles Zukoski, Jr was Mountain Brook’s first mayor, elected in 1942, weeks after the City was incorporated.

He also was, without doubt, among the most brilliant and creative public servants in Mountain Brook’s history, lauded by the Birmingham Post-Herald as the City’s Thomas Jefferson “who established its law and precept [and] brought light and order to its human relations.”

Zukoski also harbored a secret that wasn’t revealed until after he left office.

A native of St. Louis and graduate of Harvard College and Law School, Charles Zukoski, Jr. was recruited by Oscar Wells, President of First National Bank of Birmingham to build a trust department for his growing bank on 20th Street.

The year was 1926 and Zukoski was just 27 years old. The Bank directors who approved Zukoski’s hiring included such titans of the business community as Crawford Johnson, Pascal Shook, Erskine Ramsay, E.H. Cabaniss and Robert Jemison, Jr.

When Zukoski left the Bank 34 years later, he had built a trust department from nothing to a half billion dollars in assets, making it one of the largest trust departments in the Southeast.

Zukoski faced many challenges during his tenure, including a panic that led to closure of many banks during the Depression. Zukoski’s salary was cut nearly in half during those days, requiring him to sell his Southwood Road house in the Mountain Brook Estates for less than half what it cost to build it. In 1938, Charles and Bernadine Zukoski built a more modest house on Old Leeds Road near Crestline, where they raised their two young sons.

Zukoski quickly became known as a man of action. He led an informal group of community leaders in the ‘30’s which lobbied the State Legislature on ways to promote economic recovery. This group, known as the “Zukoski Committee”, included such men as James Simpson, Mervyn Sterne, Rucker Agee and Hugh Kaul.

During the late ‘30’s, Zukoski’s attention shifted to matters closer to home. By 1940, 3,500 people resided in the area surrounding Mountain Brook Estates, yet the area lacked many essential services, including adequate police and fire protection.

Voluntary dues proved to be insufficient, so Zukoski organized a group to study whether to request annexation into Birmingham or seek to incorporate a new city. At an election held on March 24, 1942, the vote was 263 in favor of incorporation and 67 against. Two months later, he was elected mayor and then re-elected in 1944, 1948 and 1952 by substantial majorities.

There is no doubt that Charles Zukoski left his mark on this new City of Mountain Brook. Despite wartime restrictions during his first term, he oversaw the formation of its departments, the hiring of its first employees, the adoption of its zoning, planning and subdivision controls.

He established the policy that the mayor and city council shall serve without compensation, a policy that continues today. He implemented the first city manager system in Alabama.

After World War II ended, residential and business construction in Mountain Brook exploded and the villages expanded. When Zukoski left office in 1955, the city had nearly tripled in size, both in geography and population, and the city budget had quadrupled.

Zukoski was later asked what was the catalyst for that growth and he responded, “We established all of the basic principles of good government that the city has enjoyed ever since.”

Zukoski’s secret

The end of the war also was a watershed moment in American race relations, especially in the South. Zukoski was determined to speak his mind on the subject, but he faced a dilemma. In his position at the First National Bank, he knew that any public expression of his views on racial matters could be detrimental to the Bank and his career.

So, in 1948, he began writing under the pseudonym, “Button Gwinnett”. His friend George Watson published the opinion pieces in the Shades Valley Sun, maintaining the secret of its authorship. Thus began an extraordinary 10-year collaboration on a series of weekly columns penned by Zukoski.

Here’s what Zukoski wrote in October, 1948…

 “The world is now demanding and the majority of our people now recognize the fundamental rightness of equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, color or creed.

 These opportunities … stem from fundamental principles of justice which transcend even the Constitution and must appeal to us of the South as they do to men of every persuasion….

 There are many things we Southerners can do … We can speed the day when a majority of our people will confess that there cannot be one bill of rights for the white man and another for the black.”

There is insufficient space in this column to delve into all the opinions of Button Gwinnett, which ranged from “States Rights & the 14th Amendment” (October 1948) to “Negro Education in Alabama” (August 1949) to “The Smithfield Bombings” (June 1949) to a 5-part series on Brown vs Board of Education (December 1952 to June 1955). Each of these letters advanced positions that presaged future civil rights battles.

Zukoski attacks segregation and supports Birmingham consolidation

After Zukoski’s retirement from city government in 1955, Button Gwinnett picked up the pace of his writing, including a compelling attack on Birmingham’s segregation ordinances.

No longer constrained by his mayoralty, Zukoski expressed his support for the movement to consolidate Birmingham’s satellite cities into one great city.

In one column published on November 3, 1955, Button Gwinnett noted his concern for “… a decline in the quality of participation at the hub in the democratic process … to the disadvantage of those in the outlying areas whose life is dependent on the character of the central city.”

Zukoski forced into retirement

By late 1957, many people suspected that Zukoski was Button Gwinnett, which led to threats against Zukoski and complaints against the Bank. Ordered to do so under threat of termination, Zukoski published his final column as Button Gwinnett on December 12, 1957.

Even so, continuing fallout from the Button Gwinnett letters resulted in his forced retirement from First National Bank in early 1962.

That wasn’t the end of Charles Zukoski, however. He continued to advocate publicly for desegregation, including one September 30, 1963 Letter to the Editor of the Birmingham News, co-authored with James A. Head, former President of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club, which advocated the hiring of Black policemen in Birmingham and the desegregation of public facilities. That letter was published just two weeks after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, Charles and Bernadine Zukoski traveled the world on behalf of the Boston-based Pathfinder Fund, a leading international reproductive health nonprofit organization.

Charles also joined the Berkowitz, Lefkovits law firm with his friend David Vann, perhaps the most vocal advocate of the “one great city” movement who served the City of Birmingham as its mayor from 1975 to 1979.

Frank McPhillips is a retired attorney, devoted husband, and father of three adult sons. After graduating from Harvard College and the University of Virginia Law School with honors, Frank served as a law clerk to Hon. Sam C. Pointer, Jr. He then participated in the founding of the Maynard, Cooper & Gale law firm and practiced there for over 35 years.

In retirement, Frank has authored a popular Covid newsletter, and currently enjoys writing on matters of contemporary and historical interest. Frank is a dedicated volunteer for nonprofits, including Advent Episcopal School Impact America,  and MB Listens.

David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown.  He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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 The 216th Day of War in Israel

By Sherwin Pomerantz

President Biden said on Wednesday that he had told Prime Minister Netanyahu that the United States would halt shipments of some weapons if the Israeli military invaded Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, using his strongest public language to date in his quest to deter a full-scale Israeli assault on the refugee-packed city.  “If they go into Rafah, I’m not going to be supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” Mr. Biden said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.

In the interview, Mr. Biden also acknowledged in a way that he has rarely done that American bombs have killed innocent Palestinians. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Mr. Biden said.  The president has objected to Israel’s planned Rafah operation out of fear that widespread civilian casualties could be caused by American bombs. He said on Wednesday that he would also block the delivery of artillery shells that could be fired into the urban neighborhoods of Rafah.

Earlier in the day at a hearing held by the US Senate’s Appropriations Committee, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch friend of Israel,  questioned Defense Secretary Austin who said that, at least at that time, no decision had been made about providing these weapons to Israel.  Sen. Graham’s interrogation is worth watching and you can see it here beginning at 2:00 minute mark…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC_1MO1ovJY

On the northern border with Lebanon, cross border activity continues with 10 attacks against Israel in the last 24 hours.  Israel has responded regularly as well.

A new House Republican bill would send any person charged and convicted for illegal activity on a US college campus to Gaza for at least six months.  Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced the bill on Wednesday alongside Reps. Randy Weber, R-Texas, and Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., in response to the ongoing anti-Israel demonstration on college campuses across the country.  Several of those protests have turned violent.  While Ogles' bill text does not mention Israel or the anti-Israel groups, it specifically targets unlawful activity on college campuses after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants invaded Israel in a surprise attack that killed over 1,000 people.  Those convicted would be forced to serve a minimum six-month community service sentence in Gaza.

"Students have abandoned their classes to harass other students and disrupt campus-wide activities, including university commencement ceremonies nationwide. Enough is enough," Ogles told Fox News Digital.  "That’s why I introduced legislation to send any person convicted of unlawful activity on the campus of an American university since October 7th, 2023, to Gaza to complete a minimum of six months of community service."   He went on to say he doubts whether these protestors would last even one day there.  This will, of course, not pass but it is an interesting approach to the problem.

Against the backdrop of campus protests, a group of federal judges appointed by former President Donald Trump say they will blackball graduates of Columbia University, ratcheting up a pressure campaign against schools they deem hostile to conservatives.

In a letter this week to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, 13 jurists led by U.S. Circuit Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch said the New York City school’s response to pro-Palestinian protests was inadequate and that the campus had become an “incubator of bigotry” with rampant antisemitism and a lack of diverse perspectives. 

“Considering recent events, and absent extraordinary change, we will not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024,” the letter said.

Although the fighting here continues unabated, hopefully the negotiators from both sides now in Cairo for talks will find a way out the current morass.  The Israeli delegation has been told by the Prime Minister’s Office that they are to keep in mind Israel’s specific objectives in this war, primarily to permanently defang Hamas and get all the hostages back.  Time will tell if this effort will be successful and at what level.

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Speaker Johnson would make a great VP with Trump.  Why?  Because he is a principled, decent, sincere man and not your run of the mill politician.

His second speech on anti-Semitism was given with our despicable cowardly, corrupt, lying president in attendance. I hope Biden choked on every word by Speaker Johnson.

https://youtu.be/WXgQbrsi74M?si=N7mmOcdn5HmjBUjn

Also:

https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/08/opinion-trumps-trial-is-a-stupendous-legal-catastrophe-for-the-history-books-alan-dershowitz/

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From a dear friend, fellow memo reader:

Why do Jews always have to be the gracious and conciliatory ones when the Islamist loons make no secret of their insane, barbaric aims?

I wish they'd made a better case for the necessity, absolute, of this war.  Hamas made it necessary and Hamas made it this awful for civilians.....deliberately.  Early on, I heard an IDF spokesman put the rhetorical question: What is the alternative?

For extra credit, examine the Islamist/gangster/welfare state hellhole that's their goal.  It goes by the name "freedom."  What a sick joke:

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/e/2PACX-1vRQgyDhIjZupO2H-2rIDXLy_zkf76RoM-_ZIYsOfn9FkI7TETgRtOfXK9VobMvGh6iEZfDPgALXJTCR/pub?pli=1

And:

https://townhall.com/columnists/jerrynewcombe/2024/05/09/the-death-to-america-crowd-n2638819

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Two of the most disgraceful and dangerous occurrences are happening as I type.  

First we have the kangaroo trials against Trump in New York, Florida and Georgia.  They have been orchestrated by our president and his thugs in the Democrat Party not to capture and punish a criminal but to prevent Biden's opponent from campaigning and using the law to besmirch him when Trump's former opponent did worse and got off Scott Free when she should be the one in jail. 

These cases will backfire on the Biden Crowd because fair minded American's see through this manipulating garbage.

Second, Biden has chosen to stab Israel in the back because of his political eagerness to win re-election. His withholding Congress's approval of funding and arms shipments  is an absolute disgrace and strengthens Hamas obdurateness and puts Israel at serious risk of losing this war and their security.


And:

Lynn's great, great uncle was a close friend of Menachem and helped form the Likud Party.
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Menachem Begin Already Responded to Biden's Threat to Withhold Aid - in 1982

In 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said to Senator Joe Biden:

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles. I’m not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

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Biden’s double game on Hamas should fool no one

A presidential speech condemned past and present anti-Semitism. However, it contradicted policies aimed at letting the terrorists win and appeasing pro-Hamas voters.

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN

When President Joe Biden wants to say the right things about Israel and anti-Semitism, he knows how to do it. Much like his comments immediately after the Oct. 7 massacres, his speech at a Holocaust commemoration held in the U.S. Capitol on May 7 struck all the right notes. He not only spoke appropriately about the Six Million slain by the Nazis, he correctly noted that, “This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust. It didn’t end with the Holocaust either. Or after—even after our victory in World War II. This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness. That hatred was brought to life on October 7th of 2023.”

Going on, he acknowledged that the current war has unleashed a surge of anti-Semitism in the United States that has been particularly felt on college campuses. He even detailed the unspeakable atrocities of Oct. 7 (which, according to a live New York Times update about the speech, offends “pro-Palestinian” protesters who deny Hamas’s crimes). And unlike his first comments about the anti-Semitic campus protests, he didn’t try to balance that with either bogus concerns about a largely mythical problem of Islamophobia or discussions about the alleged sufferings of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He also placed the blame for the current war squarely on the Hamas terror organization.

Yet, the president said, “people are already forgetting. They are already forgetting. That Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten nor have you. And we will not forget.”

A broken promise

While his words earned the applause they garnered, that last statement isn’t true. That’s because his policies—as distinct from some of his speeches that were, like those at the Holocaust ceremony, largely aimed at Jewish voters—contradict that promise.

Although he initially endorsed the Israeli goal of eliminating Hamas and seemed to implicitly commit to that again in his speech, the entire thrust of Biden’s current Middle East policy is quite the opposite. He is doing everything he can, including threats of cutting off certain military weapons, diplomatic maneuvers at the United Nations and duplicitous efforts to push through an agreement with the terrorist group, to save Hamas from defeat just when Israel put it on the ropes.

Biden has essentially been playing a double game on the war with Hamas since Oct. 7.

At times, his words have been just what Israel and its friends needed to hear as they reeled from the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. But just as the anti-Semitic left didn’t wait for the Israel Defense Forces to begin its counter-offensive into Gaza to begin to flip the narrative about the conflict to one about Palestinian victimhood instead of one about the atrocities of Oct. 7, similarly, Biden began to edge away from his initial strong stand behind Jerusalem at the same time.

Though the elimination of Hamas and the end of its rule over Gaza are actually compatible with Biden’s quixotic quest to revive a two-state solution to the conflict that the Palestinians have never wanted, the administration has done all it could to delay and minimize the IDF’s efforts since October. And since Israel is dependent on U.S. arms and ammunition—both in terms of offensive operations and the Iron Dome anti-missile batteries that were working overtime in the war’s first months as Hamas fired thousands of rockets and missiles at Israeli civilians—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt he had no choice to slow down and limit the army’s efforts.

Throughout this period, Biden and the rest of his foreign-policy team continued to smear the IDF’s actions as “over the top.” They blamed it for creating a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The truth was that Israel’s armed forces were using more care to avoid civilian casualties than any other modern army involved in urban combat, including that of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Appeasing the anti-Semitic left

The reason for Biden’s carping at Israel had nothing to do with human rights or America’s strategic interests. It was motivated by politics.

From the moment that the Oct. 7 attacks happened, the left wing of the president’s Democratic Party has been vocal in its distaste for Israel and opposition to a successful effort to take out Hamas. So-called “progressives,” as well as the extremists of the left-wing congressional “Squad,” were falsely accusing Israel of war crimes and “genocide” even before the bodies of the Oct. 7 victims were cold. They are motivated by intersectional and critical race theory ideologies, which falsely label Israel as a “white” oppressor and regard the Palestinian war to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet as a righteous cause. They want self-determination for everyone but Jews, perceiving Hamas’s genocidal goals as a form of justified “resistance.”

Living as he does in a left-wing bubble inside the White House and, as he has always been throughout his long political career, a weathervane determined to stay in sync with liberal fashion, Biden thinks the anger at his initial pro-Israel policies is the reason why he continues to trail former President Donald Trump in the polls. He believes that mollifying disaffected young leftists, as well as Arab and Muslim-American voters, is the key to retaining the support of the Democratic base. As some leftist pundits have put it, he must defeat Netanyahu before he can beat Trump. But the truth is that his problems have nothing to do with Israel, and there are far more votes to be lost in the pro-Israel center of American politics than from left-wing Israel-haters.

Still, and to his credit, Biden didn’t make good on his threats to cut off arms until recently. And though he allowed one ceasefire resolution to pass the U.N. Security Council that would have granted Hamas a reprieve without even returning any of the hostages they kidnapped, the administration held off going further than that—vetoing other dangerous resolutions, including one that would have rewarded the Palestinians for their terrorism with the world body’s recognition of their statehood.

Preserving Hamas in Rafah

But once the IDF had backed Hamas into the last enclave it held in Gaza, Biden stopped talking out of both sides of his mouth and made it clear that he opposed Israel going into Rafah and destroying the last operational Hamas military forces that had retreated there.

He’s gone to great lengths and expense to support humanitarian aid for civilians in Hamas-held portions of the Strip and blamed Israel for interrupting the flow of supplies there, including the building of a U.S. floating harbor to assist in the distribution of food and fuel. That has happened even though it’s long been obvious that if there is any real privation there, it is solely because Hamas is stealing the aid that arrives and reserving it for its own use.

Just as troubling, he’s put the full force of American influence behind an effort to broker a ceasefire deal with Hamas that will essentially hand the terror group a victory in the war it started.

The terms of the proposed deals that Washington has backed are appalling. They call for the release of some hostages, but only a percentage of those Hamas is still holding under who knows what horrible conditions. And the pressure that Washington has exerted on Netanyahu to take a deal on virtually any terms and conditions—along with the way it has coordinated this with Hamas’s ally, Qatar—has given the terrorists all the leverage. That’s why Hamas continues to turn down even the most lopsided of agreements; its leaders are convinced that Biden will not let them be defeated. That means they think they can hold out for a deal that will end the war and return the situation to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo in Gaza and still not give up all the hostages, let alone be held accountable for mass murder.

Even when it comes to the surge in anti-Semitism in the United States, the gap between Biden’s Holocaust speech rhetoric and the reality of his policies grows wider every day. He may have chided the pro-Hamas protests for their violence, rule-breaking and antisemitism. But the only people trying to hold the universities accountable are his Republican opponents. There is no sign that the administration is willing to take any action to withhold funds from these schools.


Moreover, even though the protesters won’t forgive him for his pro-Israel statements and have labeled him “genocide Joe,” Biden has refused to break with openly anti-Semitic members of his party like Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Just as telling was his administration’s invitation to the anti-Zionist If Not Now group that has spread anti-Semitic blood libels to a meeting about anti-Semitism and its inclusion of the pro-Hamas Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) among those who were allowed to give input on an anti_Semitism initiative that was nothing but virtue-signaling anyway.

Actions speak louder

So, while Biden’s Holocaust speech soothed the feelings of American Jews who are reeling from an unprecedented spike in anti-Semitism, especially at educational institutions where Jews have thought they were welcome, his actions speak much louder than those words.

An administration that is using every tactic it can think of to prevent Israel from eliminating Hamas can’t claim that it has not forgotten Oct. 7. Stopping Israel from going into Rafah isn’t about saving Palestinian lives; Hamas is all too happy to sacrifice as many of its people as necessary if that advances their goal of isolating and smearing Israel. It’s about an effort to convince American leftists and Hamas supporters that Biden isn’t as pro-Israel as he sometimes wants to pretend to be.

Having allegedly run for president in 2020 because of his supposed concerns about the hate on display from neo-Nazis at the August 2017 “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va., he is now trying to hold onto office by intermittently appeasing left-wing anti-Semites and undermining Netanyahu’s efforts to prevent Hamas from committing more atrocities on Israeli soil. The only calculus to judge Biden’s touting of the Holocaust or Oct. 7—or to determine if he truly cares about preserving Israel’s security—is whether he will let Hamas be destroyed. If not, all of his rhetoric about those subjects is nothing more than hypocrisy and hot air.

And:

Lindsey Graham: 'Blocking weapons to Israel obscene, Hiroshima, Nagasaki on steroids'

Senator Graham grills Defense Secretary Austin on the Biden Administration's freezing of a weapons shipments to Israel, asks if Austin would support dropping the atom bombs on Japan.


US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) grilled US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Charles Q. Brown Jr. on the Biden Administration's freezing of an arms shipment to Israel, demanding to know if they would have dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan in order to end World War Two.

"Would you have supported dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? General Brown, to end World War Two?" Senator Graham asked. "Do you think that was disproportionate?"

Brown replied, "Well, I’ll tell you, it stopped the world war." Secretary Austin stated that he agreed with the chairman.

Turning to Austin, Graham asked, "What’s Israel interested in? Do you believe Iran really wants to kill all the Jews if they could? The Iranian regime. Do you believe Hamas is serious when they say we’ll keep doing it over and over again? Do you agree that they will if they can?"

Austin answered, "I do." He also answered in the affirmative when asked if Hezbollah was a terrorist organization.

Grahan asked, "Okay, so Israel’s been hit in the last few weeks by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas dedicated to their destruction. And you’re telling me you’re going to tell them how to fight the war? And what they can and can’t use when everybody around them wants to kill all the Jews. And you’re telling me that if we withhold weapons in this fight — the existential fight for the life of the Jewish state — it won’t send the wrong signal?"

"If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the State of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price. This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war. They can’t afford to lose. This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids," Senator Graham said.

A senior US administration official confirmed on Tuesday that the US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The official said the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the shipment at a later date.

The shipment which was paused was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, according to the official, with the focus of U.S. concern being the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting.

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Try a Little Honesty About Israel Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed. 

By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By Ruth King

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/09/try-a-little-honesty-about-israel/

Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protestors. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion after October 7 from the Biden administration.

Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed.

“Progressive Hamas”: Gay and transgendered student protestors in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished.

Women are segregated in most Hamas-run educational institutions. Under the Hamas charter, women are valued mostly as child-bearers. By design, there are almost no women in high positions in business or in government under Hamas.

“Colonists and Settlers”: Students scream that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists” and sometimes yell at Jewish students to “go back to Poland.”

But the Jewish presence in present-day Israel is deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Dating back at least three millennia, the concept of “Israel” as a distinct Jewish state, situated roughly in its current location, is ingrained in history.

By contrast, the much later Arab invasions of the Byzantine-controlled Levant and their arrival in Palestine occurred about 1800 years after the establishment of a Jewish Israel.

“Two-state Solution”: When student protestors scream “from the river to the sea,” that is not advocacy for a two-state solution. It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on October 7.

“Occupied Gaza”: Gaza was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.

So on October 7, Gaza was not occupied by Israel. It was under the control of Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. After being elected to power in 2006, Hamas cancelled all subsequent elections and ruled as a dictatorship. Gaza forbids Jews from entering Gaza and has driven out most Christians. Israel hosts two million Arabs, both as Israeli citizens and residents.

“Netanyahu is the Problem”: The U.S. and Europe claim that the conservative government of Benjamin Netanyahu is alone behind the Israeli tough response in Gaza. Thus, both the EU and the U.S. are doing their best to undermine or even overthrow the elected Netanyahu administration.

Yet, most Israelis support Netanyahu’s coalition government’s agenda of destroying Hamas in Gaza. There is no evidence that any other alternative Israeli government would do anything differently from the present policies toward Hamas.

“Targeting Civilians”: After murdering nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, Hamas scurried back to Gaza and hid in tunnels and bases beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques. Its preplanned strategy was to survive by ensuring Gaza civilians would be killed. Hamas has indiscriminately launched more than 7,000 rockets at Israel, all designed to kill Jewish civilians.

Outside assessors have concluded that Israel has not inadvertently killed a greater ratio of civilians to terrorists compared to most other urban fighting conflicts elsewhere, and perhaps even fewer than American engagements in Mosul and Fallujah.

“Protestors Are Pro-Palestine”: Increasingly, protestors make no distinction between supporting “Palestine” and Hamas. Their chants often echo the original Hamas eliminationist charter and recent genocidal ravings of its leadership. Some protestors wear Hamas logos and wave its flag. Many cheered the Hamas massacre of October 7.

“Anti-Israel Is Not Anti-Semitic”: When protestors scream to Jewish students to “go back to Poland” or call for the “Final Solution,” or assault them or bar them from campus facilities, they do not ask whether they are pro-Israeli. For protestors, anyone identifiable as Jewish becomes a target of their anti-Semitic invective and violence.

“Genocide”: Israel has not tried to wipe out the Palestinian people in the fashion of Hamas’s one-state solution plan for Jews. Before October 7, some 20,000 Gazans a day requested to work in Israel—on the correct expectation of much higher wages and humane treatment.

If Hamas had come out of its tunnels, separated from its impressed civilian shields, released its surviving Israeli hostages, and either openly fought the Israeli Defense Forces or surrendered the organizers of the October 7 massacre, no Gaza civilians would have died.

According to Hamas’s questionable “genocide” figures, roughly 4 percent of the Gazan population died during the Israeli response to October 7. At least a third to almost half of those deaths, according to various international observers, were Hamas terrorists.

“Disproportionate Response”: Iran tried to send 320 missiles and rockets into Israel. Israel replied with three. Hamas launched 7,000 rockets into Israel and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis before the IDF responded in Gaza, often dropping leaflets and sending texts to forewarn citizens.

Israel has been disproportionate only in the effectiveness of its response. Hamas and its Iranian benefactor intended disproportionately to hurt Israel but utterly failed.

So Israel proved to be competent, and Hamas incompetent in their similar efforts to use disproportionate force.

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I am not willing to buy this at this point. 

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Anti-Semitism surging, report finds, prompting fear for future of ‘Jewish life’ in West

The US saw a 103% increase in incidents fueled by Gaza war, a global report for 2023 shows, while France stands out with near-quadrupling of cases

By Canaan Lidor

In 2023, France registered the highest increase in recorded antisemitic incidents of any country with reliable statistics, according to data released in a new report that warned that current trends could threaten the very “ability to lead Jewish lives in the West.”

Published Sunday by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League, the report showed a near-quadrupling of incidents in France, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 last year. It also highlighted antisemitism on US campuses, which the head of the ADL called the “most alarming” aspect of the surge of Jew-hatred in the United States.

Of last year’s anti-Semitic incidents in France, the tally showed that 74% happened after October 7, when invading Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 253, triggering a still-ongoing military campaign by Israel in Gaza and daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon.

In the United States, the tally more than doubled, from 3,697 incidents in 2022 to 7,523 last year, with 52% of the 2023 total occurring after October 7. In Canada, the increase was from 65 to 132; in the United Kingdom from 1,662 to 4,103; in Germany from 2,639 to 3,614, and in Italy from 241 to 454.

On an incident-per-capita basis, French Jews, who according to the report number about 440,000, were three times likelier to experience an anti-Semitic attack than Jews in the US, whose population the report estimates at 6 million.

“For those whose views serve an anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist ideological and instrumentalist purpose, October 7 was a golden opportunity to advance further their hateful and racist fringe perspectives into mainstream conservative discourse, using it to attack rivals, mobilize supporters and attract new followers,” wrote the authors of the US chapter of the report, which is titled “Anti-Semitism Worldwide Report for 2023.”

The authors of the chapter on France interviewed Jonas Jacquelin, the rabbi of the Copernic Street Synagogue, the first Reform synagogue in France. He does not wear his kippa on the street, partly because he was raised not to and in part because he does not want to provoke anti-Semitic attacks, the authors wrote.

“The year is not 1938, not even 1933,” Prof. Uriya Shavit, head of The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute, wrote in a press release. “Yet if current trends continue, the curtain will descend on the ability to lead Jewish lives in the West – to wear a Star of David, attend synagogues and community centers, send kids to Jewish schools, frequent a Jewish club on campus, or speak Hebrew.”

The 148-page report features an essay devoted to antisemitism on US campuses, where the ADL recorded 913 incidents in 2023, or 12% of the annual tally for the entire country.

“Anti-Semitism today seems to have taken firm root in the academy,” the author of that essay, Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, wrote.

On campuses across the US, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian students have staged demonstrations that included the occupation of campus buildings and other disruptions and led to clashes with police, who have arrested hundreds of student protesters. A standoff at Columbia University in New York City between police and students occupying campus grounds ended in fresh arrests last week

“Jewish and pro-Israel students have been physically assaulted, verbally harassed, bullied online, and generally made to feel unsafe on campus, while Jewish fraternities, Hillel and Chabad houses, and even dorm rooms have been vandalized,” Hirschhorn added.

Nearly 75% of American university students have said they experienced or witnessed some form of anti-Semitism since the academic year began, the ADL report notes.

“All this occurred as the leadership of academia fell silent, particularly at America’s most elite universities,” wrote Hirschhorn. She connected that reality, as she described it, to ethnic studies and discourses that vilify Jews and Israel as colonialist or oppressive; prevailing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) frameworks that fail to account for anti-Semitism; and Qatari and other funding from the Middle East.

“By dint of their affiliations, campuses sponsored by despotic and anti-Zionist regimes are sometimes silent partners to rampant human rights abuses and illiberal agendas,” Hirschhorn wrote

In his essay in the report, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL, called the proliferation of anti-Semitism on US university campuses the “most alarming” aspect of the national surge of Jew-hatred after October 7.

“We have seen instances where Jewish students barricaded themselves in a library because a pro-Palestinian mob was outside. We have heard stories of students being afraid to cross their campuses at night for fear of being attacked, or attending Shabbat dinners at their Hillel's with armed guards posted at the doors,” wrote Greenblatt.

These and other events on US campuses, he added, mean that “the Jewish community is facing a crisis unseen in generations.”

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