Monday, April 22, 2024
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Jewish people mark on Monday the start of Passover, a celebration of freedom, and around many holiday tables in Israel chairs will stand empty for hostages still held captive in Gaza.
The weeklong Jewish festival, also known in Hebrew as the “holiday of freedom,” celebrates the Israelites’ liberation from Egyptian slavery, as told in the Bible.
Passover is traditionally observed with a Seder: a holiday feast when families eat symbolic foods and read the Haggadah.
The text, which is nearly 2,000 years old, recounts the Jewish people’s Exodus from Egypt and their ties and yearning for the Holy Land.
For many this year, Passover will be stained by absence and anguish, particularly for the relatives of the hostages, grieving families, and more than 120,000 Israelis displaced from their homes in the north and south of the country because of the war in the Gaza Strip and ongoing hostilities between Israel and the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“All of the symbolic things we do at the Seder will take on a much more profound and deep meaning this year,” said Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh is being held hostage in Gaza.
These symbols include “the bread of affliction, the bitter herbs, the saltwater that represents the tears of the Jewish people when they were in captivity, in slavery,” she added.
Undoubtedly, millions will sing that verse this year with intense emotion, closed eyes, clenched fists, and the thought going through their minds that we are just reliving a scene played out time after time. It’s the same idea to destroy the Jews – only the actors on the stage have changed.
Someone will read this text somewhere and say, “Once it was Pharaoh, then Haman, then Torquemada, then Chmielnicki, then Hitler, now Sinwar and Khamenei.” Someone argumentative around that table will ask how one can compare Sinwar to Hitler, to which he who made the comparison will reply: “The intent is the same, only the capabilities are different.”
Some will read or sing that verse and be depressed by the thought that this is the fate of the Jewish people – that in every generation, someone will, indeed, rise up to destroy us. Others will focus on and take solace in the last part, that we will be saved from their hands.
That thought that we will face troubles – terrible troubles – but in the end will prevail is a powerful idea that has sustained the Jewish people throughout more difficult days than these. And it will sustain us during these trying times as well.
There are those on the outside looking at Israel’s current situation – the hot war in Gaza, the war of attrition with Hezbollah in the north, the terrorist war in Judea and Samaria, the frontal confrontation with Iran – and wonder how, and if, Israel will survive.
But Jews sitting around the Seder table laden with the bread of affliction and the Cup of Elijah will think to themselves, yes we will.
They will think: This is the promise. We have been here before, survived, and flourished, and we will do so again. It says so in this timeless text right here, a text Jews have been saying every year for centuries and whose optimism, as if by osmosis, they have internalized. Yes, they will rise up against us generation after generation. We have seen that in the past; we are living it today. But in the end, we will prevail. That, too, we have seen in the past and are living today.
Or, as a more contemporary source – Meir Ariel – wrote in an iconic 1990 song, “We survived Pharaoh, we’ll survive this as well.”
“Today we are slaves,” the Haggadah opens on a down note, but then quickly contrasts it by saying, “next year we shall be free; now we are here, next year in the land of Israel.”
That, too, has been internalized by the Jewish people. An eternal hope and belief that things will get better; that Jewish history has an upward trajectory; and that next year we will be in a rebuilt, peaceful Jerusalem.
These women are spending #Passover in nightmarish captivity in Gaza. They are enduring unspeakable tortures, day after day.
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) April 22, 2024
On this holiday of freedom, demand the release of the hostages. #BringThemHomeNow #LetMyPeopleGo pic.twitter.com/jgROLhUTco
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office released a video on Sunday, ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover, to raise awareness in the United States about the hostages whom Hamas terrorists continue to hold in Gaza.
“All of the various holiday meals around the world are characterized by values of families, closeness and warmth,” the office’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate stated.
“The ‘Empty Chair’ campaign draws attention to the absence of our beloved hostages, who have been held by Hamas for 198 days,” it added. “The campaign shows festive family gatherings and set tables around the customary holidays in the American tradition. Around the table is an empty chair, that breaks the festive atmosphere and around which the family observes sadly.”
“The video ends against the backdrop of a seder night meal with the message that the hostages will not be able to celebrate the Passover holiday with their families, and the call: ‘Let our people go,'” it added. “No family in the world should celebrate like this.”
The video will run on North American digital platforms and online television, per the Prime Minister’s Office.
Monday, April 22, 2024Elder of Ziyon
Three people were lightly wounded in a car-ramming terror attack at two separate locations in Jerusalem on Monday morning, authorities said. The two alleged perpetrators, Palestinian teenagers, were captured after a brief manhunt.A makeshift submachine gun found at one scene attested to the deadly turn the attack could have taken had the weapon not apparently jammed.Graphic surveillance footage of the incident showed a car plow into two men wearing ultra-Orthodox garb as they stood on a sidewalk, throwing them into the air.
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Monday, April 22, 2024Elder of ZiyonFriday in the evening the celebration of the Jewish Feast of the Passover commenced, and which continues eight days. Previous to this their houses are searched in the most careful manner, that no manner of leaven may remain during the feast. It is on this account that every Kind of vessel or utensil used to put leaven in, are exposed to sale; and none but new ones substituted, or such as have been reserved from one Passover to another.
The Passover Cakes that are so copiously exposed to sale at this time are made of flour and water only, without either yeast or salt ; and it is a remarkable custom introduced among the lower classes of Christians, within a few years past, of hanging up some of the Passover cakes (which are generally perforated) in their apartments, under the notion, that while these are carefully preserved, they will never want bread.
As no liquor prepared from any grain is allowable at this time among Jews, fair water, to raisin wine, is substituted.The immediate celebration of this feast consists in the decoration of the tables in private houses with the Passover cake, and some bitter herbs, which, upon their beginning to eat, the master of the family, &c., takes a glass of wine in his band, and says a Grace appointed for the occasion, concluding the whole with suitable Psalms, &c, &c. The publick celebration at Synagogue consists of Prayers, the reading of the law, and other portions.of Scripture; and this, on all festivals, is performed three times a day. No manner of work is perinittcd to be done upon the two first and the last days of this feast; but as soon as the evening of the last is over, they may again eat any manner of leaven as usual,.
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Because this racial hierarchy is fundamental to its proponents’ worldview, opposition to coexistence with Jews is global. The skinheads in Charlottesville weren’t deterred from their version of this ideology just because they live outside of Germany. Similarly, those who chant “Palestine is Arab” subscribe to this racial hierarchy wherever they are. That this chant was delivered outside the White House, for example, is not a protest of Israeli policy but rather a challenge to the foundational ideas and values of the United States.At Columbia I Am Told: ‘Go Back to Poland’
Although the expression of this worldview isn’t limited to college campuses, those campuses are the main reason we are now witnessing three Charlottesvilles a day. After all, it means students are paying attention in class.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab” is a direct application of the popular academic theory of the day, “decolonization.” The idea of Jewish self-determination in Israel being a settler-colonialist project might be a flat-earth level of historical crankery, but it is all the rage—and I do mean rage—in the classrooms of our esteemed institutions of higher learning. Teaching young minds that Jews must be supplanted from their homes because they represent a race that belongs elsewhere has a long history of inspiring those students to carry out what they’ve been taught. It is no surprise that Jews at Columbia over the weekend were told to “go back to Poland.” The racial ideology at the heart of decolonization theory demands nothing less. As a now-infamous Twitter/X post, amplified by a writer and editor at the Washington Post among others, asked in celebration of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and sexual torture spree: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.”
And that helps us understand the look of absolute despondency on Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s face throughout her congressional hearing this week. She, and many of her peers at other institutions, are facing two problems. The first is the violence and harassment targeting visibly Jewish students. Contrary to various media figures’ attempts to spin recent events, this is absolutely taking place on campus and these violations absolutely are being committed by students. They are also, however, taking place outside of campus as part of the same demonstrations a few feet away. It’s not either/or. The campus-organized protests are spreading and so is the violence they incite.
The second problem is the ideological fuel for the violence, which is being pumped from the colleges themselves. It is much easier to increase the police presence on campus than it is to change a culture cultivated purposely and with great enthusiasm over the course of decades. These schools are churning out people who have extraordinarily sick and violent beliefs toward Jews. Those sick and violent beliefs earned them good grades at these same schools.
There has not yet been a solution proffered by any of these campus administrators that would fix the broken, anti-Semitic culture of these schools, just as figures throughout history have struggled to convince the sun not to shine.
Since the first protest on Columbia’s campus in support of a “Free Palestine” on October 12, I have committed, along with my twin brother and a number of our friends, to show up at these protests with our Israeli and American flags.Brendan O'Neill: A howl of rage against civilisation
There are often hundreds of people chanting for “intifada” and a handful of us. Suffice it to say, I can think of more pleasant ways to spend a New York City night. We do it for a simple reason: we want to tell Jews at Columbia—and around the world—that we refuse to be bullied off of our own campus.
For nearly seven months, I have been asked the same question by many people in my life: “Do you feel safe on campus as a Jew?” I wear a kippah—I can’t pass. And I have always maintained the importance of standing our ground rather than letting fear drive us away.
Nothing will stanch that pride, but the situation at Columbia has escalated to a point where my physical safety is in danger.
That is not a metaphor, nor an expression of safetyism. On Saturday night, April 20, I was assaulted and harassed repeatedly inside the gates of Columbia University.
For five days now, protesters have been camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn demanding financial divestment from Israel, an academic boycott of Israel, a call for cease-fire, and an end to Columbia’s real estate purchases. Their newest demand is to defund Columbia’s public safety, the only people on campus supposedly tasked with keeping us safe.
On Saturday night, the situation on campus hit a new low. Amid multiple protests both inside and outside of Columbia’s gates, my friends and I decided to show our pride yet again, as we have on so many occasions since Hamas began its war.
For an hour, 20 of us stood on the sundial in the middle of Columbia’s campus with Israeli and American flags and sang peaceful songs such as Matisyahu’s “One Day” and “V’hi She’amda”—a much-needed ode to the hope and perseverance of the Jewish people in the face of enemies who seek our destruction.
Even as we sang lyrics such as “We don’t want to fight no more, there will be no more war,” we were met with hostility. Masked keffiyeh-wearers came to us face-to-face, trying to intimidate us. They chanted, “Fuck Israel, Israel’s a bitch!” We were told, “You guys are all inbred.” They threw water in our faces. These groups are not fairly described as “pro-Palestine.” They are active supporters of Hamas and they say so explicitly: “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” one group chanted by the gates of my school. “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.”
Indeed, the anti-militarist mask has well and truly come off this movement. The Columbia camp makes clear as day that Israel-haters want more war, not less. ‘Burn Tel Aviv to the ground’, some bigots chanted. ‘Go Hamas, we love you’, said others. Nothing better captures the crisis of Western civilisation than this vision of trust-fund genderfluid blue-haired kids singing the praises of a movement that would hurl them from a top-floor window given half a chance. In one especially nauseating incident, a white girl in a keffiyeh was seen holding a placard with an arrow saying ‘Al-Qassam’s next targets’, referring to the al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The placard’s arrow was pointed towards Jewish students waving the Israel flag. Shorter version: Hamas, kill these people. How swiftly the anti-fascists became fascists.
Media-elite sympathisers with Columbia’s Gaza camp claim these pro-Hamas cries, these demands for the obliteration of Israel and this hanging of target signs around the necks of Jews are rare occurrences in an otherwise peaceful protest. Plus, it’s mostly outsiders doing this stuff, they say. I call bullshit. If you create a space in which anti-Semites feel comfortable, so comfortable that they’re happy to openly glorify Hamas’s cosmic racist violence, then that’s on you.
What’s more, the insistence that it’s ‘only’ a few voices celebrating 7 October, just a handful of agitators who are are cheering the rape, kidnap and murder of Jews, is desperate bordering on sick. That there are any such voices in and around one of the highest seats of learning in modern America should be viewed as unsettling in the extreme. Anyone who cares for the future of academia, and for the future of the West, should be alarmed that at Columbia, the college of Alexander Hamilton, of Amelia Earhart, of Barack Obama, people have been heard saying to Jews: ‘[7 October is] going to be every day for you.’ President Biden is right: this is ‘blatant anti-Semitism’.
We need to be honest about what is happening at Columbia. This is solidarity with a pogrom. It is sympathy for fascism. It is privileged leftists getting a cheap moral kick from a mass act of racist violence against Jews that they catastrophically mistake for a blow against imperialism. It is the Socialism of Fools.
More than that, it is a howl of rage against civilisation. This rancid camp with its flashes of outright Jew hate is not an extension of the anti-war activism of old – it’s an extension of the loathing for civilisation that the young have been inculcated with these past few years. To these protesters, the Jewish State, and Jews themselves, represent Western values and Western modernity, and thus they must be raged against. Israel has become a moral punchbag for the sons and daughters of privilege whose hatred for their own societies has driven them over the cliff edge of reason and decency.
How foolish we were to think that education might deliver the young from the benighted ignorances of the past. For today, it is the most educated, the dwellers of the academy, who have allowed the world’s oldest hatred to wash over them. We can now see the consequences of teaching the young to be wary of Western civilisation and to treat everything ‘Western’ as suspect and wicked. All they’re left with is the lure of barbarism, the demented belief that even savagery can become praiseworthy if its target is ‘the West’. If events at Columbia do not wake us up to the crisis of civilisation, nothing will.
Monday, April 22, 2024Elder of Ziyon
The Passover holiday—with its ban on eating chametz—presented a particularly difficult situation [for Jews under Nazi rule.] Shortages of basic ingredients and the lack of facilities to bake matzah left many Jews unable to conduct a proper Seder ceremony. Jewish inhabitants of camps and ghettos were forced to either break kosher laws or worsen their physical decline. With a daily diet consisting of only a few hundred calories, not eating chametz could mean starvation and death.According to testimony recorded after the war, two rabbis deported from Westerbork to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with a group of Dutch Jews proposed a solution on the eve of Passover 1944. Citing a biblical commandment to live and preserve life above all else, Rabbis Aaron Davids and Abraham Levisson announced that the ban on chametz would be lifted for the holiday. They agreed that leavened bread could be substituted for matzah during Passover. In preparation, the Rabbis authored the featured prayer to be recited before eating chametz at a Seder held in the camp. A group of prisoners distributed copies of the prayer, and it remains in circulation today.
The text of the prayer is...stunning.
Before eating chametz say the following with intent and devotion:Our Father in Heaven! It is known to You that we desire to fulfill Your will and observe the Passover holiday by eating matzah and following the prohibition of chametz. But our hearts are pained that enslavement prevents us, and we are in mortal danger. We are hereby ready to fulfill Your commandment "And you shall live by them"* [Lev 18:5] and to observe Your caution of "protect yourself and safeguard your soul."[Deut 4:9] Therefore our prayer to You is that You keep us alive, and sustain us, and redeem us speedily, so that we may observe Your laws and fulfill Your will and serve You with a full heart. Amen!* And not die by them
The words in the footnote are not in the Biblical text; they are essentially a commentary to justify the eating of bread. Of course, in cases of mortal danger this would be allowed, but to me the wording is meant to convince their fellow prisoners that eating chametz is not only permitted but obligatory (the word "lizaher" is stronger than the USHMM translation "observe" but more like "observe zealously.") Asking for redemption has a double meaning - besides the usual plea for the Messiah to come, it means to be saved from the Nazis. It also appears to me that the rabbis intentionally juxtaposed the root word for slavery in "enslavement" and in "to serve You" to emphasize that the Jews only want to be servants to Our Father in Heaven and no other.
Monday, April 22, 2024Elder of ZiyonNearly 200 bodies have been found buried in a 'mass grave' at a Gaza hospital complex previously raided by Israel, officials have claimed.Health workers so far have recovered 180 bodies of people killed and buried by Israeli forces in the courtyard at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, Al Jazeera reported Sunday. Israel's military said it was checking the reports.Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza's civil defence agency, alleged that some of those killed and buried at the hospital had been tortured.
The head of Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis said 150 bodies were buried in the yard of the hospital after they started to decompose in the mortuary.
Could this be the same grave?
The NBC video from the January burial show it was done in front of a building with a fairly distinctive decorative border around its windows.
The Al Jazeera story from today of this "new discovery" shows the building behind the grave also has the same color and that distinctive window (or door) border:
The Al Jazeera story today also inadvertently supports the idea that this grave "discovered" weeks after the IDF left is the same as the earlier one Palestinians themselves dug.
A woman named Nawal al-Attal is interviewed. "I am here to find the body of my son," she says. "His name is Allah Salim Al Attal. His brother told me that he buried him here."
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Monday, April 22, 2024Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, April 21, 2024Elder of ZiyonViolence against Jews on Columbia campus.A group of what I suspect are Jewish students are caught in the middle of the jihadi supporting protest at Columbia.The mob throws bottles at their heads and screams:“Zionist!”“Genocidal Maniac!”“You’ve got blood on your hands!”“Fuck you!”“Genocidal Freaks.”“Bye, Bye, Fuckers.”Columbia IS NOT SAFE FOR JEWS!!!!!
What we are witnessing in and around campus is terrible and tragic. The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.*It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus.* No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.If you need assistance please reach out to me.May we see better days on campus soon.Chag Kasher vSameach,Rav Elie BuechlerDirector OU-JLIC at Columbia/Barnard
While some students seemed to be heeding Rabbi Buechler’s advice, others were determined to stay on campus, with one Jewish student saying he plans to remain even after being “chased up the block” a few days ago by a pro-Palestine mob.“It’s honestly horrifying now. To walk around Columbia’s campus right now is to walk through a completely hostile environment,” the senior, Avi Weinberg, 25, told The Post on Sunday.Weinberg slammed Columbia’s administration for losing its “backbone” and failing to do more to protect students.He added that he doesn’t plan to follow the rabbi’s advice or take classes over Zoom just because “a group of lunatics decided to take over campus.
In recent weeks, massive amounts of humanitarian aid have entered Gaza in hundreds of trucks. Around 500 trucks are entering the strip daily. What is particularly irksome to Israelis is the fact that this abundance is being showered on the Gazans, who democratically chose Hamas, have never revolted against it, and still support the horrific massacre - all while our captives languish in Gaza's tunnels, enduring unimaginable torture.Israel Is Hamas’s Most Potent Weapon
According to Israeli experts, Gaza is receiving far more than it needs, and the Americans know this down to the smallest details. The Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has presented data to the Americans that 21 bakeries are operating in southern and central Gaza and another three in the north. They bake millions of pitas daily. The amount of water produced in the strip exceeds 5 gallons of drinking and cooking water per person per day. There have been 3,350 coordination efforts made between the IDF and aid organizations to facilitate the entry of aid.
This picture is well known to the official American representatives. Yet, they are hounding the Israeli leaders with endless demands. Everyone dealing with the issue knows that Israel is allowing far more than Gaza can absorb. "The Americans are driving Minister Ron Dermer crazy 24/7 with all these things, knowing there's no need for them. The UN inside Gaza is failing to distribute what's coming in. So why is more needed?" asks an Israeli who is privy to the data.
The American pressure results in an increasing burden for the IDF. Soldiers are required to secure the massive supply convoys, the construction of the seaport on the Gaza coast, the laying of a new water pipeline to the strip, and the opening of a crossing in the north. Defense Ministry inspectors spend nights and days examining the contents destined for the enemy, even though the enemy itself doesn't need it.
Meanwhile, the U.S. administration is tacitly endorsing, and sometimes explicitly using, the blood libel about "starvation in Gaza." Yet its officials are well aware that there was never any danger of starvation. Israel has been monitoring the humanitarian situation in Gaza from day one and would never allow this. Yet, the official and deliberate U.S. message is "immediate risk of starvation" - a lie that fuels the anti-Israel propaganda machine, which has been spreading the falsehood of "genocide in Gaza" around the world for months now.
One Israeli official said, "In direct conversations with the Americans, you see they are well-versed in the data. We, inside the room, wonder where they're getting these statements from. They know what's happening. They have an interest in not presenting what they know, and not affirming what Israel is saying. They should be saying, 'There is no starvation in Gaza, and Israel is doing everything it can to get food in. The bottleneck is not its fault.' But they choose not to say that."
Sinwar took this strategy to a new level by building a massive underground city that would suck Israelis into killing Palestinians. Armaments, missile launchers, and terrorist command posts were positioned under hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential buildings, forcing Israelis to kill civilians, whether by airstrikes or in any conceivable ground operation if they were ever to stop the attacks. Sinwar, whose life was saved by Israeli medical intervention during his time in prison, knows that Israel does not execute even convicted murderers of Jews. His goal in provoking Israel into retaliation was to create and keep worsening Gaza’s “humanitarian crisis” and the toll of civilian casualties, thereby eliciting liberal sympathy for the Palestinians and international calls for an advantageous ceasefire while, most crucially, demoralizing the Israelis who must sacrifice their soldiers in a war they would have done anything to avoid.‘Assume Hamas leaders receive UNRWA funding’
Has the genius of Israel met its match in the genius of evil? Other commanders in the history of war have been known to sacrifice tens of thousands of their soldiers rather than surrender, but no invader ever turned his enemy into his primary weapon. Sinwar intends never to surrender, hoping that Israel will be forced to kill most of the population of Gaza in order to stop Hamas. The genocide of Jews that he undertook to engineer has already been equalized to a genocide by Jews against the innocent, harmless Hamas electorate.
When Golda Meir famously told Anwar Sadat, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children,” she divulged Israel’s greatest weakness. Coexistence is to Judaism as conquest has been to Islam, requiring the former to seek accord from the latter. Hamas was first to fully to exploit this political contrast. Liberal democracies are generally loath to go to war, but a look at the Middle East map shows why Israel—when you can find it there—has the ultimate disincentive for military action against neighbors whose acceptance it seeks. As a minority by choice, Jews have always been at the mercy of imperial powers, of which Iran with its proxies is currently the most threatening. To succeed, the aggressor has learned—and demonstrated—that he must come in the form of a victim.
Meir was wiser when she said, “Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” The defeat of Hamas is the necessary precondition for that day, though not yet its guarantee.
And now that sizable numbers of pro-Hamas sympathizers and belligerents are already active in this country, testing its freedoms and liberal virtues, we are seeing whether Americans learn enough from the war in Israel in time to prevent the brewing war against them.
People can be excluded from refugee status if they violate the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, per UNHCR’s Resettlement Handbook.
More specifically, those about whom there are “serious reasons” to believe they committed a “crime against peace, a war crime or a crime against humanity” or a “serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge” prior to being admitted to that country as a refugee or who have “been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” can be excluded.
Elsewhere in the handbook, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees notes that most acts of violence commonly called “terrorism” qualify, “particularly if they indiscriminately endanger or harm civilians.”
The 1951 convention, which the handbook cites, states that “This convention shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance.”
The United Nations has come to interpret that clause very broadly to include Palestinian “refugees” as “not only persons displaced at the time of the 1948 and 1967 hostilities, but also the descendants of such persons.”
Funding terror
“If UNRWA were truly applying universal principles, they would certainly remove anyone who belongs to Hamas from their employment from their staff but, in addition, deny them refugee status,” Neuer, of U.N. Watch, told JNS. “I’m not aware that’s ever happened.”
UNRWA has only suspended or removed an employee for belonging to Hamas in very rare instances, according to Neuer.
“I’ve never heard of anyone, though, including some of the chief terrorists, who are denied refugee status or denied aid,” he said. “We can assume that many, if not all, of the Hamas leaders are on the rolls as UNRWA refugees and are receiving funding in one form or another from UNRWA.”
Sunday, April 21, 2024Elder of Ziyon
Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was wearing a traditional Jewish skullcap when he was stopped by police while trying to cross a street in central London as demonstrators filed past on April 13.One officer told Falter he was worried that the man’s “quite openly Jewish” appearance could provoke a reaction from the protesters, according to video posted by the campaign group. A second officer then told Falter he would be arrested if he refused to be escorted out of the area because he was “causing a breach of the peace.”London’s Metropolitan Police Service on Friday afternoon apologized for the language the officer used in describing Falter’s appearance, but said counter demonstrators had to be aware “that their presence is provocative.”The Met later deleted that apology from its social media accounts and issued a second statement.
That first apology confirmed, rather than mitigated, the idea that walking around while Jewish provokes violence, not the violent protesters.
At least British media is up in arms about this story.
But the Metropolitan Police have a lot in common with Tunisia, which just canceled its annual Lag B'Omer pilgrimage for Jews to the ancient synagogue in Djerba for the same reasons - any gathering of Jews is provocative to the peace of the nation.
Tunisia decided to cancel the annual Jewish celebration held at the Djerba Synagogue on the island of Djerba...
On Saturday, the Monte Carlo International Radio website quoted Perez Trabelsi, head of the body organizing the annual visit of Jews to the Ghriba Synagogue, as confirming that the annual visit this year will be limited to limited rituals inside the temple only.
Trabelsi explained that the tense security situation and the war in Gaza cast a shadow on this event, and the decision to cancel the pilgrimage did not come out of nowhere, but rather came as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of everyone in light of the current conditions the region is witnessing. He added that Tunisia, which has a long history of supporting cultural and religious pluralism, found itself forced to make a difficult decision that reflects the magnitude of the current security challenges.
This is how antisemites win. They create an environment where Jews are unsafe, and when the cost of protecting them is too high, the authorities suddenly find reasons to ban and blame the Jews for "provoking" violence against them with the crime of breathing while Jewish.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is that in both cases, the antisemites insist that they are not anti-Jewish at all - but everyone knows that this is a lie, or else the Jews would be free to do whatever they want to do without fear or need for protection.
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Sunday, April 21, 2024Elder of ZiyonThe protests came against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government with AI and cloud services. In its statement, No Tech cited a recent Time Magazine report that found Google had built custom tools for Israel's Ministry of Defense, and contracts with the Israeli Occupation Forces.
Google continues to claim, as of today, that Project Nimbus is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” Yet, reporting from TIME Magazine proves otherwise: Google has built custom tools for Israel’s Ministry of “Defense,” and has doubled down on contracting with the Israeli Occupation Forces, since the start of its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Sunday, April 21, 2024Elder of Ziyon
In this Application, Nicaragua requests the Court to adjudge and declare that Germany by its conduct with respect to the serious violations of peremptory norms of international law taking place in the OPT (a) has not only failed to fulfil its obligation to prevent the genocide committed and being committed against the Palestinian people – including those in its component part in the Gaza Strip – but has contributed to the commission of genocide in violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereinafter “Genocide Convention”);
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Just as troubling is the willingness of many in the chattering classes to defend the protesters and pretend that expressions of antisemitism are a matter of free speech rather than hate. The Guardian’s Moira Donegan attacked Shafik in a column for what she described as “colluding with the far right” by calling in the police to enforce the university’s rules. She treated the entire idea that antisemitism was present as a right-wing talking point rather than an awful reality for Jewish students, whose plight interested her not at all.Andrew Pessin: The Indelible Stain of Antisemitism: The Failed Practice of ‘Jew-Washing,’ Part 2
The Times’ Michelle Goldberg sounded a similar theme in her denunciation of both the House committee investigating antisemitism and Shafik.
Both quoted comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a committee member whose questions were aimed at denying the antisemitic nature of the mobs that had transformed Columbia into a hotbed of Jew-hatred. That someone who has been censured by the House for her own repeated antisemitic rhetoric should sit on such a committee (or in Congress itself) is an irony completely lost on leftists. Both Donegan and Goldberg thought it was an outrage that Omar’s daughter—a junior at Barnard College—was among those participating in the pro-Hamas demonstration and rightly suspended from the school, though that piece of information was not generally known when Omar was trying to sabotage the hearing.
As with the rest of the debate about whether the antisemitism being vented on college campuses in the six months since Oct. 7 should be protected free speech, most of the arguments in defense of these mobs are disingenuous. The notion that the pro-Hamas activists are defending free speech is risible considering that most of their efforts are focused on silencing defenders of Israel and the Jews. These are not idealists acting out their sympathy for Palestinian victims but, rather, ideologues who have embraced the cause of a terrorist war to destroy the Jewish state.
What must also be acknowledged is that the crusade on the part of much of the liberal commentariat to defend or rationalize this epidemic of antisemitism is profoundly illiberal. This applies to those who, like the Times’ foreign-policy columnist Nicholas Kristof, have sought to mainstream blood libels against Israel. Their goal is to change the conversation about the war against Hamas from a necessary campaign to eradicate terrorists to an effort to legitimize a genocidal movement and its Western apologists.
The saddest aspect of this debate is the way it has been politicized by the left to make it appear that the fight against antisemitism is a Republican issue. It is deeply unfortunate that much of the liberal activist base of the Democratic Party that has been captured by advocates for critical race theory and intersectionality has taken sides against Israel in the war against Hamas. It’s also true that—as the daily drumbeat of incitement against Israel and its Jewish supporters in the Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC show—left-wing journalists are doing their utmost to legitimize anti-Jewish hate.
The effort to curb the surge of antisemitism in this country should not be conducted along party lines. Democrats and Republicans, liberals as well as conservatives, should be lining up against those who agree with Omar and her cheering section that antisemitic mobs are principled idealists rather than self-entitled hate-mongers. All decent Americans should—if not agreeing with Cotton about roughly preventing illegal protesters from taking over our public squares—be actively seeking to treat these antisemitic agitators with the disdain and punishment they deserve. If the defenders of the mobs prevail, the alternative is a nation where antisemitism is mainstreamed and Jewish safety a thing of the past.
The most famous here are perhaps the Neturei Karta, a fringe group whose members appear at anti-Israel events worldwide.[10] They are ideal for Jew-washers, since, in their ultra-orthodox appearance, they are quite visibly Jews—and what could better exonerate an Israel-hater from charges of antisemitism when such clear Jews hate Israel too? Yes, they are a small group, but they are real, and they do derive their anti-Israelism from their Judaism: the Hebrew Bible as they read it teaches that Jews will legitimately re-form their political collective in the Land of Israel only by divine means, upon the coming of the Jewish Messiah. The contemporary State of Israel, then, is a religious abomination. The fact that the state and its overall culture are largely secular—surely only worse. No wonder they have 3-D hatred toward it.[11]Gaza cease-fire alone won’t repair larger enduring rift, political scientist says
But does the existence of Neturei Karta successfully exonerate the non-Jewish anti-Israelist from the charge of antisemitism? (Henceforth we focus only on the “invoking authority” mode of Jew-washing.)
To see why not, consider a distinction made by former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who famously described campus attempts to boycott and divest from Israel as “antisemitic in effect if not intent.” Effective antisemitism will roughly be any position, policy, or behavior that de facto discriminates in some negative way against Jews, whatever its actual content or intent. Intentional antisemitism is much harder to define, but doing so should not be necessary for our purposes. Suffice to note that sometimes a person’s intentions can absolve even his effective antisemitism from counting as antisemitism simpliciter.[12]
Neturei Karta’s ideology does seem to be effectively antisemitic, after all, for it discriminatorily denies to the Jewish people (pre-Messiah) the same right to political self-determination in their ancestral homeland that presumably all other peoples enjoy in theirs. Members of the group themselves may escape the charge of being intentional antisemites (or antisemites simpliciter), however, since they sincerely derive their position from bona fide Jewish principles.
But the same is simply not true for the non-Jewish Israel-haters who Jew-wash with Neturei Karta. They share the group’s effectively antisemitic doctrine that the Jewish state is illegitimate while not sharing precisely those intentions that would exonerate their antisemitism.[13]
So Jew-washing with Neturei Karta fails. Neturei Karta provide an illusory cover for Israel-haters’ antisemitism, but they do not remove it.
We turn in the next part to what we might call “ultra-non-orthodox Jewish anti-Israelism.”
Calls for a cease-fire in Gaza may be well-intentioned, but a halt to the current fighting will not repair the enduring rift between Israelis and Palestinians. That can only happen once the Palestinians abandon an ideology that rejects the legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish state, said Israeli political scientist Einat Wilf ’96.
During a conversation Friday with Tarek Masoud, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance and faculty director of the Middle East Initiative at HKS, Wilf spoke about the war in Gaza and why she thinks there’s been so little progress reaching a resolution over the years. The talk was the fifth in an ongoing Middle East Dialogues series at Harvard Kennedy School, organized by Masoud, which aims to showcase a range of viewpoints on the current crisis and promote informed dialogue.
Describing herself as “the poster child of the Israeli Two-Stater Left,” Wilf served in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, from 2010 to 2013 as a member of the Labor Party, which supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state. She said she still favors such a goal, but no longer believes the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is just about land.
“I voted for [Yitzhak] Rabin; I voted for [Ehud] Barak,” she said of the former Labor prime ministers. “I was euphoric in the ’90s, like many Israelis … when Barak goes to Camp David,” she said. “I believed in the vision of a new Middle East.”
But in 2000 and again in 2008, she watched Palestinian leaders refuse the terms of proposals from the Israelis for a state in the West Bank in Gaza.
“And I began to ask myself, ‘What is going on? What do the Palestinians want — because it’s clearly not a state,’” said Wilf, a former intelligence analyst. “They could have had that, and they walked away” without being criticized by the Palestinian people.
She came to that realization after conversations she’s had with many highly educated, moderate Palestinians over the last 20 years. “They basically tell me things like, ‘The Jewish people are not a people. You’re only a religion. This idea that you have a connection to this land, you invented it to steal our own,’” she said.
“And I realized from the conversations with them that how they think about the conflict, and how I think about it, don’t even meet. For them, the very existence of a sovereign Jewish state is illegitimate.”
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