HAVING LOST BOTH SETS OF MY GRANDPARENTS TO THE FINAL SOLUTION, IF I SAW SOMEONE HOLDING A FINAL SOLUTION SIGN, I WOULD RISK BEING IMPRISONED BY BEATING HIM UP WITHIN AN INCH OF HIS LIFE

EXCLUSIVE  Jewish George Washington University student whose grandparents survived the Holocaust is 'afraid' of anti-Israel protestor's haunting call for Nazi 'final solution' as university 'accommodates' pro-Hamas activists

 

By Jon Michael Raasch

 

Daily Mail

Apr 26, 2024

 

 

Heinrich Himmler (L) and Reinhard Heydrich were the architects of the Final Solution, the extermination of Europe's Jews

 

As hundreds gathered at George Washington University to participate in anti-Israel protests Friday afternoon Jewish students told DailyMail.com they have felt afraid, adding that the university is 'accommodating' the 'pro-Hamas' activists.

The demonstrations on campus have been going off and on since the October 7 attack, but recently students - taking a page out of Columbia University protestors' playbook - have established a pro-Gaza encampment that has yet to be taken down. 

Protestors set up the encampment early Thursday morning and hundreds later joined in on the demonstrations. 

And despite the university demanding the camp be disbanded by 7:00 p.m. Thursday evening, the tents and their occupants still stood in defiance by late Friday afternoon.

One protestor at George Washington University (GWU) Thursday was even seen carrying a sign calling for the 'final solution,' which was Adolph Hitler's plan for the 'annihilation' of Jewish individuals.

'To hear people calling for more violence makes me really afraid to come out of my house out of fear that someone's going to hurt me or do something to me,' Skyler Sieradzky, a Jewish GWU student, told DailyMail.com at Friday's protest. 

 

Skyler Sieradzky, a Jewish GWU student whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, said the ongoing pro-Gaza protests on campus have scared her and hearing rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel has been alarming

One protestor at George Washington University (GWU) was seen Thursday carrying a sign calling for the 'final solution,' which was Adolph Hitler's plan for the 'annihilation' of Jewish individuals

Hundreds arrived at the GWU campus Thursday and Friday to protest Israel and the school's alleged support of the Israel-Hamas war 

Protestors set up the encampment early Thursday morning and hundreds later joined in on the demonstrations

 

'As someone whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors, seeing people using the Holocaust as something that we should be striving towards again, it makes me very sad and very scared.'

Sieradzky was one of a few counter-protestors who arrived to support Israel amid calls for its annihilation at GWU Friday. 

She draped her self in an Israeli flag, which earned her some disdain and dirty looks from pro-Gaza demonstrators. 

'It's very scary to see signs calling for the extermination of the state of Israel, calling for another intifada,' Sieradzky said. 'In the second intifada one of my family members was killed in a suicide bombing.'

 'When I see signs calling for violence against the state of Israel and more or less Jews as a whole, it makes me really scared.'

'I've also never been more scared to be Jewish,' the college student continued. 'I see antisemitic remarks being uttered behind my back about me in my classes. It just makes me feel very afraid. 

'Seeing the final solution sign made me really sad,' she added.

 

Police had set up barricades around the student Gaza encampment to block entry and exit from the student-led protest area

Activists cheered for hours as students mulled about the campus, some avoiding the protest by crossing the street or finding an alternate route to their destinations 

 

Two other Jewish GWU students also shared similar concerns, though their identities have been withheld as they fear reprisal from their college colleagues for speaking out.

'You have these chants, these slogans: by any means necessary, you a have a sign that says final solution, you have river to the sea, resistance is justified, all these slogans that take the movement into a situation where it's more anti-Israel than it's actually pro-Palestinian, more pro-Hamas than pro-Palestine,' a Jewish GWU student told DailyMail.com. 

'So what I think is problematic about this is that nobody from the movement condemns this, nobody from the movement speaks out against it.' 

'The discourse can lead to violence and the discourse right now is not was not good,' he said. 

Another Jewish GWU student told DailyMail.com the university has been complicit in accommodating the protests by blocking off roads, not enforcing their own rules and moving final exams to different buildings away from the protests to allow for students to test in a quiet area away from ongoing demonstrations. 

'They've made all these accommodations specifically to allow this to go on while at the same time saying that they were breaking the rules,' the Jewish student said before adding 'they're chanting and supporting terrorist organizations.'

'And so it seems like the administration is not really up to enforcing their own rules, which of course only empowers those who don't have respect for rules in the first place.'

'I'm definitely concerned that there'll be protests at graduation, and at a time when  families of graduating students come all the way to D.C. for supposedly happy occasion.'

'People might take that opportunity to instead do political protests and sort of put a damper on that day for for a lot of people.'

 

GWU protestors dressed a statue of George Washington in a Palestinian flag and traditional keffiyeh scarf 

 

Every pro-Palestinian GWU protestor approached by DailyMail.com for an interview declined to comment. 

Some, however, did admit that they were instructed by the protest organizers not to speak to the press. 

Jinan, a D.C.-based activist and chef who does not go GWU, told DailyMail.com she was there to support the students' demands that the university 'divest from the occupation and the state of Israel.'

She also was there to demand the Biden administration to pull funding from Israel.

'These are our tax dollars that are going to fund other wars and to protect other countries when we are ourselves are very vulnerable with inflation, healthcare, the student loan crisis and many other things.'

She applauded progressive 'Squad' members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for both visiting Columbia University's 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment,' which was the inspiration for the GWU camp.   

Aya, an Israeli and Jewish high school junior that was at GWU touring the campus when she stumbled upon the protest with her parents called the event 'absurd.'

She was in Israel during the October 7 attack and was stunned by conversations she had with the protestors.

'They don't know what river or what sea they are talking about. It's all so stupid.'

When pressed on if she wants to attend a university that condones protests like the one she experienced, she told DailyMail.com: 'If it continues like this, absolutely not.' 

AS A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, I CURSE THE COLLEGE PROTESTERS AND THE FACULTY MEMBERS THAT INDOCTRINATE THEM INTO PROGRESIVES

Anti-Semitic campus know-nothings aren't pro-Palestine... they're pro-WAR! And, in their stupidity, they're making the strongest case yet for Israel's survival

 

By Andrew Neil

 

Daily Mail

Apr 26, 2024

 

What started as legitimate and even understandable student protests on American university campuses against the carnage in Gaza have quickly morphed into something much more sinister. (Pictured: In Georgia).

 

What started as legitimate and even understandable student protests on American university campuses against the carnage in Gaza have quickly morphed into something much more sinister.

Instead of 'Give Peace a Chance', as anti-Vietnam war demonstrators used to shout in the 1960s, it is 'We Are Hamas', 'Obliterate Israel' and even 'Kill all the Jew'.

This descent into raw anti-Semitism has been fast and frightening. A student generation with little grasp of history, no understanding whatsoever of the complexities of the Middle East conflict and no firm principles beyond the obsessive simplicities of wokery has been easily swayed by rampant nihilism.

Protest leaders claim they are pro-Palestinian. In fact, they are pro-Hamas, with all the evil baggage that entails.

One leader of the so-called 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' established by student squatters at Columbia University in New York openly says on social media that 'Zionists don't deserve to live'.

 

Protest leaders claim they are pro-Palestinian. In fact, they are pro-Hamas, with all the evil baggage that entails. (Pictured: Columbia this week). 

One leader of the so-called 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' established by student squatters at Columbia University in New York openly says on social media that 'Zionists don't deserve to live'. (Pictured: Emory University).

 

Columbia is the epicenter of hate but its poison has spread not just to other Ivy League universities but to less prestigious seats of learning across the country.

Campuses are now awash with cries and banners claiming 'October 7th 10,000 times', 'Boycott the genocidal Zionist apartheid state', 'Holocaust was no big deal' and 'Only one solution, intifada revolution'.

This is not an anti-war movement. It is a pro-war movement that seeks to intimidate Jews and to destroy Israel.

It is a movement spawned by ignorance and prejudice, always a deadly combination that leads to no good.

Many of the protestors have no idea what they're chanting. No concept of the Holocaust. No knowledge of an intifada.

Privileged, upper-middle class white students at universities which cost at least $75,000 a year to attend don keffiyehs in performative protest to show solidarity with people about whom they know nothing.

At the University of Washington a protest was called off, hilariously, because those participating were 'too white', which tells you everything about the mollycoddled, self-indulgent student elite behind these protests. They are Hamas's useful idiots.

After weeks of shouting 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' they still have no idea what sea or what river.

Nor are they able to define Palestine (though they are not alone in that). They are poster children for the woke rot that grips American academia.

Be in no doubt they have been influenced by radical teachers in the faculty, where rational debate and diverse opinions are now a rarity. Yet no matter what evil emanates from their mouths, they pay no penalty.

Of course, like all Americans, they have their First Amendment rights. But the issue is not free speech. It is criminal conduct, which the first amendment does not protect.

There is also a double standard at work here. Universities have strict codes of conduct. They would, rightly, not allow the 'free speech' of white supremacists on campus. So why are the disgusting tropes of anti-Semites tolerated?

 

Columbia is the epicenter of hate but its poison has spread not just to other Ivy League universities but to less prestigious seats of learning across the country. (Pictured: University of Texas).

 

Jewish students are being intimidated, threatened and harassed on a daily basis. How could it be otherwise given the relentless anti-Semitic filth being shouted and scrawled on banners on campuses across the nation? Yet nobody is doing much about it.

The university authorities, as usual, are useless. At Columbia Jewish students were told to stay away and use remote learning.

A university rabbi was forced to tell Jewish students to go home because the university couldn't guarantee their safety. A Jewish professor had his ID card deactivated, seemingly because he wanted to mount a counter protest.

We have been here before. As the Nazi poison took root in Germany in the early 1930s, Jewish academics and students were blocked from universities — or simply advised to stay away. We know where this leads. Which makes the universities' inaction all the more inexcusable.

Yes, there has been a more robust response to the encampments and intimidation at some universities, such as Austin, Texas, and Emory, Georgia, where rubber bullets and tasers were deployed.

But often the encampments are allowed to spring up again and the protests continue as before.

Moreover, what is required is not heavy-handed law enforcement, though there will be times when that is necessary, but for the universities to announce that any students mouthing the anti-Semitic obscenities and parading the offensive banners now omnipresent in so many campuses will immediately cease to be students of that university — and never again readmitted. Plus those suspected of intimidation and harassment will be handed over to the police.

That might give some cause to pause and think about what they're doing.

The time to get tough is now because the poison is spreading beyond the campus. The FBI reports that anti-Semitic incidents are at 'historic levels'. Jews make up only a small proportion of the US population but are once again the victims of a majority of hate crimes.

Who would have thought it would ever come to this again — or that, given what we now know, the official responses would be so pathetic.

Ironically, though their ignorance means they will have no idea of this, the protesters are making the case for the Jewish State of Israel.

After the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish leaders determined that there had to be a Jewish homeland open to all Jews — and to which all Jews could flee for safety in extremis, should anything like a Holocaust rear its ugly head again.

Even Jews in Western democracies who thought they'd have no need of such a homeland took comfort from the fact one existed. That was especially true of American Jews who always thought the one country in which they would be safe, other than Israel, was the United States.

Safe havens, like New York City, with the biggest Jewish population of any city outside Israel, would suffice. Israel was an insurance policy for which they'd probably have no need.

As the scourge of anti-Semitism subsided in the years after World War Two, some progressive Jewish leaders even wondered aloud if a distinct Jewish homeland was really needed.

 

Ironically, though their ignorance means they will have no idea of this, the protesters are making the case for the Jewish State of Israel.

 

Nobody is wondering that now as, even in America, radical Muslim leaders call for the destruction of Israel, backed by students at the nation's most elite universities and therefore those possibly (and frighteningly) running the country in the years to come.

America's Muslim population can only grow while Jews will become an ever smaller percentage of the total population.

Violent Islamism has a strong footing in many Western democracies these days and its influence is likely to grow stronger. Suddenly that Jewish homeland looks more necessary than ever.

This sorry tale still has some way to run. The pro-Hamas protestors have strong allies on the Left of the Democratic Party. They will be out in force come the Democratic convention in Chicago this August.

Chicago, of course, was the scene of the most violent Democratic convention ever in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, when Mayor Daley's somewhat robust police force clashed with radical demonstrators trying to disrupt the convention.

I don't say we're in for a repeat as bad as that but it will not be pretty on the streets of the Windy City this summer.

The President, for today's protestors, is 'Genocide Joe'. They will be out to pressure the Democrats into ending their support for Israel the way they wanted the party to end its support for the Vietnam War all these years ago.

Vietnam involved the conscription of hundreds of thousands of young American men to fight a massive war on the other side of the world, which eventually cost over 55,000 American lives. That gave the protests a special edge and relevance. Israel involves none of that, which is why it does not have the same piquancy for most folks.

But pro-Palestinian sentiments are the coming force in the Democratic Party, with all the attendant anti-Semitism we are currently witnessing.

There can be no compromise with such forces, whatever the superficial attractions of winning the youth vote by pandering to know-nothing students. We shall see if Biden is up to the challenge and stands firm in his resolve to support Israel.

BIDEN'S GAZA PIER UNDER CONSTRUCTION BY US SOLDIERS COMES UNDER MORTAR FIRE FROM HAMAS

IDF rescues UN officials from terrorist mortar fire at Gaza aid pier

US hopes to begin delivering aid using the new pier by early May.

 

Israel Today

Apr 26, 2024

 

 

US soldiers with the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) ready the USAV SP4 James A. Loux to deploy from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. on March 12, 2024. The unit is deploying as part of a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore mission to conduct 1,800-foot causeway off the coast of Gaza to enable the flow of critical aid from the sea to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict.

 

Israel Defense Forces troops secured UN officials who came under mortar fire on Wednesday when touring a pier being constructed by US military personnel off the coast of Gaza to increase the amount of aid flowing into the Palestinian enclave.

The IDF soldiers rushed the officials to shelter after Palestinian terrorists launched projectiles at the installation.

“The terrorist organizations continue to systematically harm humanitarian efforts while risking the lives of UN workers, even as Israel allows the supply of aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip,” according to the IDF.

The Israeli military previously confirmed that troops would provide “security and logistical support” for the project, “further demonstrating the IDF’s commitment to working with the international community to ensure the continuous entry of humanitarian aid to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.”

Last month, Politico reported that Israel had committed to providing a “security bubble” for the temporary pier meant to protect the American personnel. The IDF will also be responsible for physically connecting the pier to the Strip’s shore.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed on Thursday that the US military had started constructing the pier to boost aid deliveries. The project reportedly involves 1,000 American soldiers, who will not have boots on the ground in Gaza.

The US Army has hired a subcontractor, Fogbow, to manage the distribution of aid in Gaza, although the exact mechanism has not yet been made public.

The US hopes to begin delivering aid using the new pier by early May. A senior American official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity on Thursday, said the sea route will initially total 90 trucks daily which could quickly rise to about 150.

The official suggested the mortar attack was not connected to the humanitarian mission, adding that security for the pier will be “far more robust” when the aid begins flowing.

In his March 7 State of the Union address, US President Joe Biden announced the establishment of a floating pier to deliver supplies.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant welcomed the initiative, saying that it would help collapse Hamas.

“We will ensure that the aid reaches those to whom it should get to and that it does not reach those to whom it should not get to,” he added.

Gallant pointed out that the sea-based aid corridor is “designed to bring direct assistance to the residents and thus continue to undermine Hamas rule in Gaza. We will bring the aid through a maritime route that is coordinated with the US on the security and humanitarian side, with the help of the Emirates on the civilian side and appropriate checks in Cyprus. The goods will be brought by international organizations with American assistance.”

JEWS FOR PALESTINE ARE USEFUL IDIOTS WHO WILL BURN IN HELL

Pro-Hamas Jews are Jews for antisemitism

The presence of Jews among those demonstrating for Hamas and supporting the surge in antisemitism doesn’t vindicate the “pro-Palestine” cause. 

 

By Jonathan S. Tobin

 

JNS

Apr 26, 2024

 

 

Protesters in Los Angeles, many of them Jewish, participate in a rally to demand an immediate ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, Nov. 15, 2023.

 

One of the standard talking points of those seeking to rationalize and even justify the efforts of those supporting the survival of Hamas and the defeat of Israel since the Oct. 7 massacres is the fact that many Jews are among the ranks of these “critics” of the Jewish state. So, when observers point to the blatant antisemitism that has become a feature of the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests that have proliferated on North American college campuses and elsewhere in the last six months, those backing the demonstrations simply say they can’t be against Jews because Jews are among the participants.

The fact that a small sector are either lending tacit or overt support to the cause of those who wish to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet are themselves Jewish doesn’t absolve those who support this despicable cause. A Jewish student donning a Palestinian keffiyeh and chanting against Israel in the name of “Palestine” to fit in with fashionable opinion, or the public intellectual speaking out “as a Jew” to denounce the Jewish state’s right to defend itself or even to exist can be useful for those who traffic in Jew-hatred. Individuals who want to engage in antisemitism without having to be held accountable for spewing bigotry or even endangering Jews are glad of the cover these useful idiots provide. 

Jews disagree on just about everything, including their religion, history and Israeli policies. There is a vigorous debate going on in Israel about whether the current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should continue in office, in addition to whether the war against Hamas is being pursued with sufficient vigor or how much the country should concede to obtain the freedom of the remaining hostages being held by terrorists in Gaza. Those arguments will ultimately be resolved, as is the case for any democracy, at the ballot box the next time the country holds an election. American Jews also differ on a host of issues.

Turning against their own

It is natural for a small people to embrace a “big tent” philosophy to include as many people as possible. But there is nothing legitimate about Jews who provide cover in one form or another for antisemites, and even worse, an organization like Hamas, whose purpose is Israel’s destruction and the genocide of the Jewish people. Those who act in this manner don’t have the standing to confer authenticity to a cause that has none, and which, at its core, is steeped in intolerance for Jewish rights or safety.

The phenomenon of people who turn against their own and support their enemies is hardly unique to the Jews. Whether their motivation is their loathing for their countrymen or because they have been seduced by some ideology, such betrayals are a universal theme. However, due to the small number of Jews in the world (a population currently estimated to be 15.7 million souls, a figure that is still smaller than the 16.6 million that were believed to be alive in 1939 before the mass slaughter of the Holocaust), such betrayals have a disproportionate impact and receive far greater notice in a world where antisemitism is still a potent force.

That is the context for any discussion about the role of Jews in the “pro-Palestine” movement.

Jewish students are certainly present among the college mobs chanting for Israel’s destruction (“from the river to the sea”), supporting terrorism against Jews around the world (“globalize the intifada”) or merely identifying with the Oct. 7 murderers (“We are all Hamas”). Some of the professors who have rushed to their defense are also apparently Jewish, such as the signatories of this letter from Columbia University faculty speaking out in favor of the pro-Hamas demonstrators on that campus.

The same is true of public figures who have been leading the effort to demonize Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists. New York Times contributor Peter Beinart, who once styled himself “liberal Zionist” but now advocates for Israel’s elimination, makes much of his alleged Jewish piety. Others on the far left don’t make such claims but still cite their Jewish heritage when supporting those who oppose the Jewish state’s existence. Perennial far-left presidential candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party is someone who falls into that category. Her recent rant on X in which she said that Jews can go back to Poland, alleged that the Israeli army was attacking pro-Hamas American college students on their campuses and said that only 0.1% of Jews support Zionism illustrated both her ignorance and how untethered her views are to reality.

Nevertheless, the attention these figures get from the mainstream media, in which publications like the Times or NPR claim that the Jewish element in antisemitic demonstrations on campuses are as representative of the Jewish community as supporters of Israel, demonstrates how they are being used.

The assertion that Israel’s actions are so egregious that a sizable percentage of American Jews no longer support it or have altogether embraced the cause of anti-Zionism is a key talking point for those seeking to isolate and demonize the Jewish state.

Rooted in falsehoods

Part of the problem is that the premise of such arguments is rooted in falsehoods. Israel is not conducting a genocide in the Gaza Strip, and owing to the large number of children there never has. It has done more to avoid civilian casualties in its war on Hamas than any modern army has ever done in urban combat. Nor should anyone believe the fraudulent totals of Palestinian casualties put forward by Hamas.

It is equally false to allege that most American Jews no longer support Israel. While opinions may differ on Netanyahu or specific government policies, polls continue to show overwhelming support for Israel in its war on Hamas.

Opposition to Zionism from certain elements in the Jewish community has existed since the birth of the modern movement in 1897. Before 1948, many prosperous Jews opposed a Jewish state because they wrongly thought that its existence would lead to their being deprived of their rights as Americans. Adherents of Reform Judaism in the 19th century embraced a vision that essentially eschewed any sense of Jewish peoplehood. And ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism because they believed that the creation of a Jewish state must await the coming of the Messiah. The Socialist Bundist movement believed in the creation of an autonomous Yiddish-speaking Jewish existence in Europe and hoped that a Communist revolution would enable that by ending all forms of prejudice.

Those positions have been marginalized since the Holocaust and the rebirth of a Jewish state in 1948 with the creation of Israel. Once Zionism stopped being merely a proposal and became the idea associated with the existence of an actual country where Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, and the Arab and Islamic world, had found shelter, all of the arguments against it collapsed. Since 1948, anti-Zionism has become indistinguishable from antisemitism simply because reversing not just the idea but the entity would necessitate another Jewish genocide. And it would also mean depriving Jews of rights denied to no other people on the planet.

The fears of the assimilated about the success of Zionism have long been exposed as self-serving fantasies. The Reform movement shifted in the 20th century to a position of support for Israel and Zionism, as well as a more traditional view of Jewish peoplehood. The hopes of the Bundists were crushed by Soviet antisemitism and the destruction of European Jewish civilization by the Nazi war on the Jews. And though a tiny fragment of haredim still oppose Israel and show up at pro-terror demonstrations to voice their puny support for those attempting to kill fellow Jews, they are unrepresentative of the larger ultra-Orthodox world, which has made its peace with Israel and has grown exponentially because of its existence.

Today, Jewish anti-Zionism is largely the preserve of ideological extremists on the far left. Their positions mimic the toxic myths of woke ideology like critical race theory and intersectionality, which falsely claim that Israel and Jews are “white” oppressors. (Those who know the facts understand that the majority of Israelis are Mizrachi.) Others advocate what they call “Diasporism,” an ideology that glorifies Jewish weakness and homelessness, and deplores efforts of Jews to defend themselves or have what other peoples take for granted, such as the right to live in peace and security with defensible borders in their ancient homeland. Curiously, while these anti-Zionist seekers of marginality and exile think that being homeless is somehow good for the Jews, they don’t think the same is true for Palestinian Arabs. While they decry even the most liberal concepts of Jewish nationalism, they are strong supporters of “Palestinian self-determination” and statehood, despite that cause being rooted in the belief that the same right should be denied to Jews.

Such intellectual arguments are risible and clearly anchored in an attempt to revive Marxism. But just as most of the anti-Zionist talking points emanating from the left is an echo of Soviet disinformation and propaganda that was used to promote the libelous “Zionism is racism” campaign of the 1960s and 1970s, it is equally true that Diasporism is being exploited by supporters of Hamas, as well as those who engage in open antisemitism.

Trafficking in blood libels

That is exactly what the activist groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow are doing. Both groups have gained popularity on campuses and have largely stolen the thunder of liberal Zionist groups like J Street, which tried to balance their vicious opposition to Israeli policies with at least theoretical support for the existence of the Jewish state. The two groups are not only openly opposed to the existence of a nation of 7 million Jews; they also traffic in blood libels about it and its supporters. Yet they are often cited as not only representative of Jewish opinion by the mainstream media but treated as credible and even idealistic voices.

One may be sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian Arabs as a result of their leaders’ decisions to repeatedly reject peace offers that would have given them a state since 1947. They have repeatedly waged wars that caused more suffering to themselves than to the Jews. But when sympathy with a people that is suffering because it chose war and terrorism crosses over into support for genocidal Palestinian fantasies about erasing the last 75 years of history, it ceases to be advocacy for those in need and becomes a form of enabling violence. And that is what Jewish supporters of the “free Palestine” movement are doing.

Simply put, if you advocate for the destruction of Israel and oppose the defeat of a terrorist group that committed unspeakable atrocities on Oct. 7—and continues to seek a goal of Jewish genocide—then it doesn’t matter if you claim to have Jewish heritage. Those who do so can conduct public prayers or otherwise cloak their beliefs in a veneer of Jewish practice or heritage. But if the only point of your Jewish identity is to provide cover for those who commit violence against Jews and who believe they should be denied rights denied to no one else, then you are just as much of an antisemite as any other supporter of such toxic causes, whether “pro-Palestine” or neo-Nazi.

In the current context when Israel and the Jewish people are under siege from a surge in antisemitism that was provoked by the Oct. 7 crimes committed against Israel, a Jew who embraces the anti-Zionist “pro-Palestine” position is siding with the enemies of their own people.

Throughout history, such betrayers have always afflicted the Jewish people. However, only in our current era have they done so while masquerading as defenders of Jewish ethics that somehow erase basic elements of Judaism, like love of the land of Israel or even the right of Jews to defend themselves against the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping that Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7 and that so many college students are now defending. They lend no legitimacy or credibility to the cause of leftists and Islamists who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. Jews may disagree about the government of Israel, but those who have joined pro-Hamas demonstrations can’t hide behind their Jewish origins. They are not Jews for justice or human rights. They are Jews for antisemitism—and should be treated with the contempt that anyone who sides with the murderers of their own people deserves.

MBS KNOWS THAT IF IRAN EVER THREATENS HIS KINGDOM, ISRAEL WILL HEELP DEFEND SAUDI ARABIA

Joe Biden’s disastrous Israel-Saudi peace plan

Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman can save the Middle East from the Biden administration. 

 

By Eric Levine

 

JNS

Apr 25, 2024

 

 

 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman understands that if a Palestinian state is a prerequisite to any peace agreement, there will be no such agreement.

 

In an attempt to prove that he is not finished trying to destroy the Middle East and undermine Israel and America’s national security interests, President Joe Biden is now pushing ahead with an ill-conceived plan to link the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia to Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state.

Israel should thank the president for his efforts and take a pass.

Biden’s efforts are reminiscent of former President Jimmy Carter’s initial unwitting attempt to thwart peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978. Upon hearing that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wanted to negotiate a peace deal, Carter proposed an international conference to forge a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the entire Arab world.

Sadat knew this would destroy any chance of peace with Israel. To make the point that the negotiations were strictly between Egypt and Israel, Sadat traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset. It was one of the 20th century’s most important acts of bravery. Sadat’s trip ultimately led to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty and set a precedent for future agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Both Israel and Egypt reaped tremendous benefits. Egypt regained the Sinai Desert, which it lost to Israel in 1967; received billions of dollars in foreign aid from the United States, which Sadat desperately needed to feed his people and save the Egyptian economy; and got American weapons and training for the Egyptian military.

For its part, Israel sidelined the largest standing army in the Arab world, thus ensuring no regional foe could militarily threaten its existence.

Like the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, full normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a transformative event. Done properly, it would change the complexion of the Middle East forever.

Because any such agreement will include American security guarantees for Saudi Arabia, it will firmly entrench the Saudis in the American sphere of influence. The Saudis are currently watching as the U.S. publicly distances itself from Israel as Israel tries to destroy Hamas and retaliate against Iran. While Biden is undermining Israel, the Saudis are rooting for Israel to destroy Hamas and act as a bulwark against Iran’s aggression. Biden’s perfidy cannot help but cause the Saudis to question the value of an American security “guarantee.”  

Under the right conditions, full normalization with Saudi Arabia will be a dream come true for Israel. It will represent full integration into the region, which will send a message to Israel’s enemies that Israel is a nation like any other and will be treated as such.  

Rather than press forward to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and put the final touches on a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Biden has decided to give the Palestinians veto power over the process.

As a moral issue, it is appalling that the Biden administration is willing to reward Hamas for the Oct. 7 massacre. Biden’s plan will make Hamas into heroes. They will be the ones whose “bravery” won their fellow Palestinians their own state.

The survival and ascendency of Hamas will also mean that their benefactor Iran will be further empowered and entrenched in the region. Thus, a Palestinian state will be an existential threat to Israel. It will become a base from which Hamas and other Iran-sponsored terrorists can launch attacks intended to destroy the Jewish state. Iran will use the same proxy forces to overthrow our Arab allies.

Moreover, as an independent state, “Palestine” will be free to enter into treaties with other countries. What should Israel do when there are Iranian military bases in Jenin and Gaza City?

To highlight the foolishness of the Biden plan, history shows that the establishment of a Palestinian state is not a prerequisite to peace. Indeed, the opposite is true.  

The Israel-Jordan peace treaty and the Abraham Accords did not require the establishment of a Palestinian state. That was by design. The Arab states knew any such requirement would give the Palestinians veto power over their respective nations’ ability to make peace. These Arab states understand that the Palestinians have no interest in making peace.

On Oct. 6, 2023, Saudi Arabia was on the cusp of entering the Abraham Accords. The kingdom’s de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) had made numerous demands in exchange for full normalization with Israel. Not one of those demands included the establishment of a Palestinian state. MBS, like his fellow Arab leaders, has no intention of giving the Palestinians veto power over his nation’s national security.

As historic and important as normalization with Saudi Arabia would be, Israel must decline Biden’s offer. Rather than ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Biden plan would create an Iran-dominated terror state in the center of the Middle East. It will pose an existential threat not just to Israel but to our Gulf Arab allies as well. In short, the creation of a Palestinian state now will undermine everything the normalization process is designed to achieve. 

But all is not lost. Israel and Saudi Arabia have made significant progress towards normalization that cannot be reversed.  

Unlike Egypt in 1978, Saudi Arabia poses no military or geopolitical threat to Israel. Because Iran is a common enemy, the two countries have unprecedented cooperation between their intelligence services. During Iran’s unprecedented attack on the Jewish state, Saudi Arabia participated in the effort to help protect Israel. As a result, MBS sleeps more soundly at night. He knows that if Iran ever threatens his kingdom, Israel will help defend Saudi Arabia. None of that will change even if Israel and the Saudis do not formalize relations.

The two countries are already engaged in commerce. Additional commercial and economic ties are being contemplated. This will continue with or without a formal normalization agreement.

All parties should work towards improving the lives of innocent Palestinians. But establishing a Palestinian state now or requiring Israel to take “concrete and irreversible steps” towards creating one is not an option at the moment.  

It is time, however, for another Sadat to emerge. MBS should seize the moment and go to Israel. History will record it as one of the 21st century’s most important acts of bravery. With that one trip, he can change history.

THE NEW PROGRESSIVE MANTRA: DEATH TO ISRAEL, DEATH TO THE JEWS

‘Pro-Palestine’ campus mobs think Jew-hatred is progressive

Student protesters don’t really care about Palestinians or human rights. They are indoctrinated sheep who have been taught to think that Israel and Zionism are evil. 

 

BY Jonathan S. Tobin

 

JNS

Apr 25, 2024

 

 

 

Anti-Israel protesters take over the campus of Columbia University, April 22, 2024

 

Ideas that reduce complex problems into simple mantras are always popular. But those that cloak a political ideology in the sort of language and symbolism in sync with the cultural fashions of the moment and allow people to imagine themselves on the right side of history can spawn world-changing movements. When young people especially are indoctrinated with such notions—the idea of correcting a historical wrong—the results can produce the shocking surge of antisemitism that’s unfolding right now on U.S. college campuses.

The spectacle of a critical mass of this current generation of American college students—egged on by many of their professors and even administrators—chanting slogans about erasing the State of Israel from the map (“from the river to the sea”), cheering on Islamist terror against Jews everywhere (“intifada revolution” and “globalize the intifada”) and speaking openly about banning the presence of “Zionists” from their midst, if not condoning violence against them, has shaken many Americans. That is especially true for liberal Jews and others who believe that antisemitism is primarily if not solely a problem on the political right.

Yet the most important part of this story is what hasn’t happened. Instead of a united nation responding to these expressions of hate and bigotry with one voice, many declarations are being heard in defense of what are, for all intents and purposes, a burgeoning mass movement supporting the Hamas terrorist movement that carried out the manifold atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Toxic leftist ideas

How is it possible for what is supposed to be the best and the brightest of American students—those who attend Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell and many other elite universities where the “pro-Palestine” protests have sprung up—to embrace such a profoundly evil cause? 

The simple answer for what should be seen as responsible points to the intellectual fashion of the day, which, for lack of a better term, we are forced to call “woke” ideologies. The toxic ideas of critical race theory and intersectionality, which teach that the world is permanently divided between “white” oppressors and people of color who are their victims, have decided that Israel and the Jews belong to the former, and Hamas and its mass of Palestinian supporters are among the latter.

These ideas have been mainstreamed of late in America’s educational system and culture. Since the moral panic about race that occurred in the Black Lives Matter summer after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in May 2020, they have become the new orthodoxy against which dissent is not permitted in U.S. leading institutions.

While some of us have been pointing out for years that the BLM movement and the ideas behind it grant a permission slip for antisemitism, this has only become obvious to most people in the last six months. To the horror of many people, the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust didn’t engender sympathy for Israel or the Jewish people. Instead, it provided the spark for a surge in antisemitism around the world almost immediately after Oct. 7.

Many Jews believed they could always count on enlightened liberal opinion in this country not only to condemn expressions of right-wing Jew-hatred in the strongest terms but to also isolate it. Instead, they have watched with amazement and concern as the mobs engaging in antisemitic invective have been defended or rationalized in mainstream liberal media like The New York Times and MSNBC as idealists or, at worst, emotional children whose actions are an understandable reaction to Israeli atrocities. In doing so, those who are taking this line aren’t just repeating and spreading Hamas propaganda and blatant falsehoods. They are accepting the premise that opposition to the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet is somehow the natural political position of those who call themselves progressives.

‘Very fine people’

Indeed, much like the BLM riots that wreaked havoc in American cities in the summer of 2020, the campus protests are being described as “mostly peaceful.” The narrative about the campus mobs in much of the corporate media is that they are merely “pro-Palestine” and that any antisemitism is merely the excessive behavior of a few marginal people who don’t represent the true spirit of the protests.

Almost as troubling is the fact that even when the antisemitic nature of the protests is recognized, the core problem is ignored. It’s not just that those taking part are engaging in demonstrations where Israel and its supporters are demonized, Jewish rights erased and Jews are being threatened. It’s that the people doing this don’t think they are wrong. They are convinced that they are speaking up for a righteous cause. Not only is that false premise being reinforced by mainstream press coverage, but it is also being upheld by leaders of the political left.

Indeed, the most outrageous example of that didn’t come from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who is notorious for her own antisemitic statements and who showed up on the Columbia campus this week to show solidarity with the “pro-Palestine” mob in the company of her daughter, a student at Barnard College who had been suspended for her role in violating the school’s rules.

The best encouragement the students received was from President Joe Biden, who, when asked about antisemitism on college campuses, condemned it but then added that he was just as concerned about “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” It was, as Alan Dershowitz and Andrew Stein wrote in The Wall Street Journal, a “very fine people” moment for the president.

That referenced the infamous claim that former President Donald Trump had said that there were some “very fine people” among those who gathered in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 for the neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally. Of course, Trump didn’t say that since he was referencing those who opposed the taking down of Confederate statues, and not Nazis or members of the Ku Klux Klan.

While that distinction was ignored in the media scramble to condemn Trump, Biden is largely getting a pass for his own effort to treat the cause that the antisemitic agitators are supporting as valid. The point being is that much of the media and leftist opinion are treating those yelling slurs at Jews as “very fine people” who are just going a little too far in their advocacy.

In the wake of Columbia University president Minouche Shafik’s ambivalence about enforcing the school’s rules against illegal demonstrations and hate speech, the narrative in the liberal media has again flipped with The New York Times concentrating on what they see as a wrongheaded decision to call in the New York City Police Department to remove the pro-Hamas encampment (though the tents returned the next day). Indeed, the paper’s urban affairs columnist Ginia Bellafante wrote that the main problem isn’t campus antisemitism but the willingness of administrators to punish the antisemites, who she and those reporting in the news section analogized to the anti-Vietnam war and anti-South African apartheid demonstrators of the past.

A movement steeped in ignorance

What is lacking in the coverage and most of the discourse is that—as interviews with them show—most of the students even at a school like Columbia can’t really explain why they are against Israel except by mindlessly repeating slogans about racism and oppression that have nothing to do with the facts on the ground in the Middle East or patent falsehoods about “genocide” in Gaza. They don’t know the history of the conflict and seem to think that Israelis and Jews are, as Palestinian propagandists claim, settler/colonialists in the one country in the world where Jews are, in fact, the indigenous people. Their demands for university divestment from Israel are based on intersectional ideology in which the century-old Arab war to deny Jewish rights is falsely depicted as analogous to the civil-rights movement in the United States.

The ignorance of these young adults is pathetic, as is their absurd cosplaying in which the wearing of keffiyehs has become campus terrorist chic. Lacking their own strong identity, they are adopting one that they perceive will give them some cachet as supporters of an embattled though fashionable cause. But having been spoon-fed the same lies that spawned the BLM movement throughout their educational experience, in which antisemitism has been redefined as progressivism, no one should be surprised by any of this.

Nor should we accept the claim that they are merely demonstrating sympathy for Palestinians or shock at human-rights violations. Far greater losses of life in wars in the Congo or Sudan—and an actual genocide in Western China where Beijing has put an estimated 1 million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps—haven’t moved them to utter a single word. If they really were for peace or the theoretical cause of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they would be in favor of eradicating Hamas, which is opposed to any peace that doesn’t involve the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its people.

The sad truth is that massive numbers of students at elite schools and elsewhere have been taught to adopt the Hamas Charter, whether they understand what they are supporting or not. If you think that Zionism—the national liberation movement of the Jewish people—is racism, you are denying rights to Jews that no one would think to deny to anyone else. That is antisemitism. If you are advocating for a ceasefire that would allow Hamas to get away with mass murder, you are supporting Hamas. And if you think Israel is illegitimate and should be destroyed, you are also supporting Hamas terrorists, and their genocidal plans and actions.

Tolerating the intolerable

People who advocate for hateful ideologies—whether they are directed at African-Americans, Jews or anyone else—have a First Amendment right to express their views. But they don’t have a right to be tolerated in educational institutions or treated as principled dissenters in the Times. We all know that there is zero tolerance for neo-Nazis or other right-wing extremist Jew-haters at American universities or in the liberal media. But because these institutions have been captured by woke ideologues and mainstream politicians like Biden fear their wrath, their moral equivalents on the left demonstrating on college campuses to “free Palestine” are tolerated, rationalized, excused and even lauded as heroes. In doing so, we are being asked to tolerate the intolerable.

To be “pro-Palestine” today is not to stand up for oppressed people. To the contrary, it is an expression of solidarity with latter-day Nazis and a willingness to mainstream hatred of the Jewish people, not just Israeli policies. But to condemn them is not enough. The only way to explain what has happened and to do something about it is to roll back the woke tide and purge schools, cultural institutions and the mainstream media of those spreading racialist ideas that foment this toxic hatred. Until the “progressive” ideas at the heart of the problem are dismantled, all the hand-wringing and expressions of concern about campus antisemitism will be meaningless.

WHILE BIDEN IS RESUPPLYING ISRAEL WITH WAR MATERIALS, BLINKEN'S STATE DEAPRTMENT IS WORKING TO DESTROY THE JEWISH STATE

Now is the time for choosing

“What is important now is for all of us, all of us who … cherish our values and our civilization to stand up together and to say: Enough is enough,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

 

By Caroline Glick

 

JNS

Apr 26, 2024

 

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem, March 31, 2024

 

On Wednesday, hikers around the southern Israeli city of Arad discovered the remains of an Iranian ballistic missile from the April 13 overnight assault. Israel’s Channel 11 identified it as a Khader-1 missile. The Khader-1, like the Imad missiles, which Iran also used in its strike, are nuclear capable.

The fact that Iran used two ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads should sound every alarm bell. In an interview with Deutsche Welle on Tuesday, International Atomic Energy Agency chairman Rafael Grossi said that Iran is “weeks rather than months” away from having enough enriched uranium to develop a nuclear bomb.

Israel’s war is not a war of choice. It isn’t a conflict that Israel can shrug its shoulders and walk away from, or opt for a limited goal of blocking incoming strikes. This is a war for national survival. Hamas made clear the genocide it aims to achieve on Oct. 7. Its appalling cruelty to the hostages it has held captive for more than six months demonstrates still further that there is no way to fight to a draw with this jihadist terror regime. There is no “deal” to be had with Hamas leaders. The same is true of Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. And, of course, the same is true of Iran.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and their terror partners have used all the resources at their disposal to expand their capacity to annihilate Israel. They have not done this to jockey for stronger negotiating positions. They are putting everything they have into building these capacities because they really want to destroy Israel and kill the Jews. The calls for Israel’s destruction are not mere slogans. They are solid commitments.

The good news is that Israel has the military and economic power to defeat its enemies completely. The bad news is that in their efforts, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and their other partners are not fighting alone. While the United States and other Western nations are willing to speak out against Hamas and Iran from time to time, they completely oppose Israel’s effort to defeat its enemies. Israel is permitted to defend against incoming attacks. But it is prohibited from taking decisive offensive action.

To block Israel from winning, the United States and its partners in Europe and the United Nations are waging an unprecedented, comprehensive and ever-escalating political war against Israel. Its clear goal is to criminalize Israel’s war effort and to effectively deny the Jewish state the right to self-defense.

Consider the news from the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Israel is not a member of the ICC. But to seize jurisdiction over Israel, the ICC took the legally dubious step of accepting “Palestine” as a member state. Since Oct. 7, the Palestinian Authority has deluged the ICC with war crimes complaints against Israel, even though they lack evidentiary basis. But they are supported politically by a slew of anti-Israel NGOs, and the U.N.’s institutionally anti-Semitic governing apparatus and agencies.

Early this week, rumors began to swirl that ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan is poised to act on these groundless complaints and issue international arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. If Khan proceeds as reported, Israel’s top leaders will be unable to visit any of the ICC’s 120 member nations without first securing bilateral agreements with authorities in each country not to arrest them during their stay.

This is terrible in and of itself, of course. But the wider implication is even more dire. If Khan goes through with his plan, he will essentially declare Israel a criminal state with no right to self-defense.

Given that Israel is in the midst of a terrible war for its national survival, by denying Israel the right to self-defense, the ICC will deny Israel the right to continue to exist. Moreover, the ICC will have made it the position of the international community that the Jewish state must be destroyed.

The United States is not a member of the ICC. All the same, Khan owes his election to the support he received from Washington. To repay the favor, Khan closed two ICC investigations into alleged U.S. war crimes related to the American war in Afghanistan shortly after he assumed office.

On Tuesday, Israel’s top political reporter, Amit Segal, revealed that “very senior officials” at the ICC told him that Khan’s initiative was given a “green light” by the Biden administration.

“There is no way the chief prosecutor would decide on such a dramatic step, in a war still ongoing—with very little evidence—without first getting at least a ‘green light’ from the Americans,” Segal cited his sources as saying.

If their allegation is true, Segal noted, then “this is yet another unprecedented low in relations between Israel and the United States at a very sensitive time on the eve of the ground operation in Rafah.”

Listing Israel as a major human-rights abuser

Rafah is the heart of the story. For months, it has been clear that the key to Israel’s victory in its war against Hamas is the seizure of Rafah, Hamas’s final outpost, strategically located along the border with Egypt.

For months, U.S. President Joe Biden and his top officials have done everything to block Israel from seizing the city. They insisted that Israel was responsible for the welfare of the 1.4 million Gazans in the city and that Israel had to evacuate them. They also prohibited Israel from opening the border with Egypt to permit Palestinians to leave Gaza and seek safety in third countries.

Rather than argue, Israel purchased tens of thousands of tents and has set them up for the Gazans leaving Rafah in a safe area.

As the clock ticks down to the operation, the United States has ratcheted up its slanderous claims against Israel. USAID administrator Samantha Power accused Israel of deliberately inducing a “famine in northern Gaza.” The United States made resupplying Gaza its primary war effort. Never mind that Gaza may be the best-stocked enclave on earth with aid packages selling for pennies in open markets. On Monday, Biden announced that America is providing $1 billion to Gaza and pointed an accusatory finger at Israel.

“We’re going to immediately secure that aid, and surge it, surge it, including food, medical supplies, clean water. And Israel must make sure this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay,” Biden barked.

The massive quantities of supplies entering Gaza daily have enabled Hamas to ready itself for the coming battle and to restore its control over all aspects of civilian life in the area. It has also enabled Hamas cells to quickly reinstate themselves in areas that IDF forces vacate, forcing soldiers to retake areas time after time.

Ahead of the news of the ICC initiative, the U.S. State Department informed the media of its intention to sanction an entire IDF unit, manned by soldiers on the ultra-Orthodox spectrum. The State Department also expanded U.S. sanctions against Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria to include organizations and individuals fingered by anti-Israel NGOs in the United States and the Palestinian Authority that seek to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

This week, the State Department issued its annual Human Rights Report for 2023. The report places Israel together with Russia, China and the Taliban as major human-rights abusers. The State Department’s assault on Israel flies in the face of in-depth reports from U.S. and British military experts that have detailed how Israel has gone to lengths to prevent civilian deaths that are unprecedented in the history of warfare. The ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza is at most 1.3:1, the lowest in history, they have shown.

Like the threat of ICC arrest warrants, all of these shockingly hostile U.S. actions are directed towards the goal of criminalizing Israel’s war effort and intimidating Israel’s leaders into canceling the operation in Rafah, suing for a hostage deal that will lead to Israel’s strategic defeat and securing Hamas’s survival and Iran’s strategic victory and emergence as the uncontested regional hegemon—on the cusp of a nuclear arsenal.

‘More has to be done’ to fight antisemitism

The administration-directed onslaught is buffeted by the anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas pogroms at campuses from coast to coast. The symbiotic relationship between the vilification of Israel by the U.S.-led international community in support of Hamas’s survival and Israel’s defeat, coupled with the assault on Jews at universities, is forcing a choice on us all. A video address on Wednesday drew the link explicitly.

Noting that many leading universities have enabled the antisemitic violence on their campuses, Netanyahu said “more has to be done,” to fight antisemitism.

“It has to be done not only because they attack Israel. That’s bad enough. Not only because they want to kill Jews wherever they are. That’s bad enough. It’s also … because they say not only ‘Death to the Jews,’ but ‘Death to America.’ And this tells us that there is an anti-Semitic surge here that has terrible consequences.

Explaining the connection between events in the war on the ground and assaults on Jewish students and faculty, Netanyahu said: “We see this exponential rise of antisemitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists. Genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians. Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide. Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and sundry war crimes. It’s all one big libel. But that’s not new.

“We’ve seen in history that antisemitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander; lies that were cast against the Jewish people that were unbelievable. Yet people believed them.

“And what is important now is for all of us, all of us who … cherish our values and our civilization to stand up together and to say: Enough is enough.

“We have to stop antisemitism because antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world. So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike who are concerned with our common values and our common future to do one thing: Stand up. Speak up. Be counted.”

Israel’s choice is between defeating its enemies on the battlefield even at the cost of terrible condemnation and isolation or collapsing under pressure and losing. Israel is called to make this choice in the immediate term, and its fate stands or falls with its decision about Rafah.

But while the focus is on Israel, the choice belongs to all who seek to preserve their freedom and safety. Will you stand with Israel, and by doing so, protect your own freedom and rights, or will you sacrifice both by staying silent?

PLAYNG CHICKEN ?

by Bob Walsh

 

 

The people who own and operate Tik Tok have said that they would rather shut it down than sell it.  Is that a negotiating position or are they playing chicken with American law makers?  Damned if I know.  I am tempted to say Damnd If I Care but I do sort-of, because I am very bothered by what is essentially a major ChiCom intrusion into the fabric of our society.  I believe that many of the users, probably most of the users, of Tik Tok really don't CARE who is data mining their happy asses as long as they can watch their favorite "influencers" and post cat videos until hell freezes over.  These mostly young clowns are turning into drones, which I am confident is the whole idea.

EDITOR'S NOTE: TikTok reached 1.92 billion users in 2023. 40% of Americans use TikTok as a search engine. 2 out of 3 U.S. teens use TikTok daily. TikTok is worth $50 billion on the NASDAQ.

Them ain't chickens.

GEORGIA INMATE TERMINALLY REHABILITATED

By Bob Walsh

 

Jacob Henson

 

 

Jacob Henson, 31, was shot to death by a "prison guard" while in the process of attacking staff at an off-grounds hospital.

The incident apparently took place at a hospital.  He had been transported there due treat his injuries.  While there he overpowered one officer and seized that officer's pepper spray and sprayed him with it.  The second officer shot Henson to death. 

Henson was doing an 8-year stretch on 25 assorted counts of criminal nastiness, all apparently property crimes.  His move to the bigs didn't go so well for him.  

GBI is investigating.     

FIRE THE FACULTY!

Faculty petition to hold no-confidence vote in UT-Austin president after protest response

President Jay Hartzell defended the response but faculty criticized the presence of armed state troopers. Fifty-seven people were arrested.

 

By Robert Downen, Ikram Mohamed and William Melhado

 

 

The Texas Tribune

April 25, 2024

 

Police arrested pro-Palestine demonstrators at UT Austin on April 24, 2024

 

Fallout from police crackdowns on a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Texas at Austin continued Thursday morning with faculty condemning the response, university leaders defending their actions and students organizing a second round of protests.

At a much less tense rally Thursday on UT-Austin's campus, faculty with the school's chapter of the American Association of University Professors said they planned to hold a vote of no confidence in President Jay Hartzell over his management of the protest the day before and the school's implementation of legislation banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities. AAUP members were seen passing around a petition asking faculty to sign in their support.

Students at the rally reiterated their main demand from the day before, calling on UT-Austin to divest from all weapon manufacturers and companies involved with Israel. They also called for Hartzell's resignation and complete amnesty for those student protesters and members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which organized Wednesday’s event, who were arrested.

All told, 57 people — including one journalist — were arrested on the school’s campus on Wednesday, the Travis County Sheriff’s office said Thursday. The arrests quickly sparked backlash from faculty and students, who called the reaction heavy-handed since the protest showed no signs of violence when it started.

Most of the criminal charges against protesters — 46 — were dropped, according to the Travis County attorney's office.

Authorities at Wednesday's student walkout ordered protesters to disperse and started making arrests on criminal trespassing charges, a class B misdemeanor. Protesters then regrouped on the university's South Mall and were soon surrounded by law enforcement — including Texas Department of Public Safety officers — who formed a perimeter behind a chain-link barrier and pushed protesters onto the sidewalks. A procession of mounted state troopers and officers on foot herded students farther using body shields and their horses, which at times came within grazing distance of protesters.

As footage from the protest went viral on social media — including a video of police slamming a local TV cameraman to the ground — some Republican leaders cheered the police response, accusing the demonstrators of being "pro-Hamas" or calling the protest an "unlawful assembly."

In a Wednesday evening statement, Hartzell defended the response, saying the university “held firm” and that student protesters had “tried to deliver on their stated intent to occupy campus.”

“Peaceful protests within our rules are acceptable,” Hartzell said. “Breaking our rules and policies and disrupting others’ ability to learn are not allowed. The group that led this protest stated it was going to violate Institutional Rules. Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied.”

Hartzell’s explanation was quickly decried by faculty groups as well as students.

In a Thursday morning statement that was sent to Hartzell, the university's Faculty Council Executive Committee said it was “gravely alarmed” by the reaction to Wednesday’s protest and accused Hartzell of inviting state troopers — many of whom were involved in detaining and corralling protesters — onto campus.

“Across the generations, our University has been home to protests of every shape and size, and to a tradition of meeting those protests with understanding and nuance — not with police batons and body shields,” the faculty group wrote. “Needless to say, we don’t believe that President Hartzell’s message to the community Wednesday night comes close to providing a justification for the University's conduct. We have also urged him to use more restraint in the future — and to articulate, as clearly as possible, where he believes the line is between campus protests that can and should be addressed by campus and local law enforcement personnel and protests that warrant calling in armed state troopers.”

The Texas chapter of the AAUP also blasted the university’s response and called for canceling regular school activities. Some UT-Austin students on campus Thursday said their professors told them classes on Thursday would be optional.

“Instead of allowing our students to go ahead with their peaceful planned action, our leaders turned our campus into a militarized zone,” the group said. “No business as usual tomorrow. No classes. No grading. No assignments.”

The faculty group told colleagues to gather Thursday at noon in front of the UT Tower, where the local Texas State Employees Union had initially planned to rally against recent laws and cuts targeting the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The union, however, said it would cede the space to pro-Palestinian protesters who are planning a second day of rallying.

The Palestine Solidarity Committee vowed to continue protesting at the school Thursday.

“We join our faculty’s call to continue to protest in the face of oppression! We call on our community to resist the draconian tactics of intimidation employed by our university and to reaffirm our demands tomorrow,” the group said.

On Thursday afternoon, hundreds of protesters stood on the university's main mall and stared up at the UT Tower shouting “Hartzell out.”

 

Assistant professor of Women's & Gender Studies Pavithra Vasudevan said “University administrators abandoned students to police forces.” 

As UT-Austin professors, students, and supporters demonstrated on campus on Thursday, April 25, 2024. Assistant Professor Pavithra Vasudevan speaks to the crowd.

 

Assistant professor Pavithra Vasudevan said Hartzell had failed faculty and staff multiple times, including when the university announced about 60 layoffs related to the implementation of the state's DEI ban.

“University administrators abandoned students to police forces, their own students,” Vasudevan said. “There were people abusing students here yesterday and our administrators were nowhere to be found.”

Throughout the protest, there was one key guideline that organizers wanted attendees to remember: “We keep us safe.” Organizers said they had lost faith in the university’s commitment to students’ safety and urged attendees to not speak with police officers or university administrators.

Despite the arrests and mayhem, Vasudevan said Wednesday's protest ultimately was a huge victory for students.

“They showed the university that they know how to hold the space [and] they know how to hold it peacefully,” Vasudevan said. “They’re showing the kind of courage and graciousness that university administrators don’t [have]. They’re filling in a role of leadership that university administrators are not playing. [The university administration] is failing us. They're failing the public education system and the University of Texas at Austin. The students are helping us bring it back.”

Meanwhile, prominent Republican leaders have continued to call for a crackdown on the demonstrators and faculty who are supporting them.

"Fine. Don’t do the job UT hired you to do," Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican who is running for Speaker of the Texas House, wrote on social media in response to the Texas AAUP's calls to suspend school activities. "I fully support you all being fired. This is 'unprofessional conduct that adversely affects the university'."