Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Good To Know: Terrorists of PFLP and Hamas Support Student Protests At @Columbia (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

You know the students of Columbia University are being repressed when Palestinian terrorists come out to declare their support for them.

Joe Truzman, a senior analyst for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, tweeted Wednesday morning that Hamas came out in support of Columbia students:

Who knew that the same Hamas terrorists who slaughtered over 1,200 Israelis and took over 200 hostages -- many of whom died in captivity -- had a soft spot for individual human rights.

Don't believe me?
Read it for yourself, via Google Translate:

Apparently, Al Qaeda and ISIS were not available for comment.

But the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine was!
And the PFLP was just as outraged as Hamas.

Eitan Fischberger, who posted this on Twitter has a point: The PFLP claims to have students on the Columbia campus in some capacity. What does that mean?

What involvement, if any, do the Palestinian terrorists of the PFLP have at Columbia?

The New York Post reports, Pro-terror radical launched 2-hour anti-Israel tirade at Columbia University event weeks before protests exploded:

Radical anti-Israel activists told Columbia students, “There is nothing wrong with being a fighter in Hamas” — weeks before the campus exploded in pro-Palestinian protests.

In a two-hour tirade to the hardest core of anti-Israeli activists at Columbia and its sister college, Barnard, Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said, “These are the people who are on the front lines defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.”

Kates — who was referring to a terrorist organization responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of Israelis on October 7 — and her husband, Khaled Barakat, spoke to members of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Group in a seminar called “Resistance 101.”

Not surprisingly, this presentation by Kates was based on deception:

Kates and Barakat represented themselves as speaking on behalf of Samidoun, the “Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network,” at the meeting.

In reality, Barakat is a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is a designated terrorist organization responsible for a string of attacks on Israeli civilians and closely allied to both Hamas and Hezbollah.

The PFLP has a hand in the riots at Columbia which have led Columbia University to offer remote classes for the rest of the semester.

So when the PFLP says they have students at American universities, those universities better be paying attention and the leadership of those universities better be ready to protect their students from the riots and attacks on Jewish students that we have seen so far.

But the reasons for concern go further.

In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Steve Stalinsky, executive director of MEMRI, writes that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West. He points out how various terrorist leaders openly encourage supporters to protest "in cities everywhere."

Stalinsky warns that the issue goes beyond protests:

The collaboration between senior terrorists and their growing list of friends in the U.S. and the West has real-world consequences. These groups are designated terrorist for a reason. They don’t plan marches and rallies—they carry out terrorist attacks. And when the U.S. and Western activists, including college students, see that their marches and protests aren’t achieving their goals, they may consider their next steps—which will be influenced by the company they have been keeping.

Colleges have shown they are not up to containing the developing riots.
The media again is in denial about these "mostly peaceful protests."

Congress has demonstrated its concern.

The first step is to make clear that free speech does not allow the growing threat and harassment of Jews on college campuses and on US streets.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

I created this cartoon after reading two NPR interviews of people on Columbia University campus.

One was with Rabbi Yuda Drizin, director of Columbia's Chabad, who emphatically said three times that he will not speak for or against Columbia's administration. He stated Chabad's position that Jews should not run away while emphasizing the dangers Jewish students faced:

DRIZIN: For the Jewish students here, my wife, Naomi, and I see firsthand, like, what they're all going through. But at the same time, the response cannot and should never be fear or to [be] scare[d] away. And we have extra security. We have heightened security. There is - we have walking escorts to get to the Chabad house, to get back. But there is never a time to turn away and especially not at Passover, when we have to stand strong and remember our redemption and celebrate together as a family.

SUMMERS: You mentioned that you and your wife, Naomi, have seen firsthand what students have experienced there. You've said that you're horrified by what you witnessed during protests on Saturday on and near campus. Can you just give us a snapshot of what you have seen there?

DRIZIN: Yeah. To be honest, I don't like to amplify those elements of what's happening on campus. It's all out there. But, you know, I'm seeing students being told, go back to Poland. You know, you are just colonizers. You have no place. You know, it's really horrendous stuff. And this is to Jewish American students. ....

SUMMERS: I have to ask you. How do you separate the concern over safety for Jewish students from the rights of all students - and, I should say, including Jewish students - to peacefully protest the state of Israel?

Who is talking about peaceful protests?

NPR's message is , sure, Jews have the right to be safe, but other students have the right to make their lives hell! How do you balance the two?

While Rabbi Drizin does not want to wade into politics or what Columbia's response should be, the other Jew that NPR interviewed revels in it.

Debbie Becher, an associate professor of sociology at Columbia who has joined the antisemitic protesters, tells NPR, without any pushback, that Jews at Columbia are perfectly safe and that all the incidents of threatening Jewish students are fiction made up by right-wing outsiders:

In my campus, it actually feels quite safe and peaceful. It's unfortunate that leaders are telling Jewish students who support Israel's war on Gaza that they are unsafe and that the national news and some social media had been portraying our campuses as rife with violence and protests. In fact, the center of attention - there's an encampment, a pro-Palestinian encampment, at Columbia right now - has been a place of sharing and community building. Students have watched movies there. They hold teach-ins. They study. They eat together.

Last night, I attended a Passover seder in the middle of it with about 75 Jewish students, a dozen Jewish faculty and many non-Jewish students and faculty. It was beautiful to see so many different cultures participating in a seder in a pro-Palestinian space. And I think it's important to say that we can't keep one group safe by punishing and repressing others.

So what's happening is that, in the name of preventing antisemitism, the university has suspended a dozen or more Jewish students for taking part in nondisruptive, peaceful action. Does their safety matter? What about the safety of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Black and brown students arrested by the NYPD at Columbia's request and those kicked out of their dorms by Barnard College?

MARTÍNEZ: So you're saying there is communication happening, that people are talking to each other face to face.

BECHER: Absolutely. There is more talking happening now in the last week that protests have resumed, even though the university is calling them unauthorized. I think what I want people to know is that the actual crisis here is the university leadership's failure to stand up to pressure from right-wing actors. These actors don't care about universities or student well-being.

We wanted our leadership and have wanted our leadership to support student and faculty rigorous debate, to support the way that we teach and learn. And instead, they're capitulating to right-wing actors who want to gut universities for what they see as our woke indoctrination. They don't care about our students.

There's communication between Jews who hate Israel and non-Jews who hate Israel! This is the rigorous debate that makes life at Columbia so wonderful for Jews!

This gaslighting and outrageous discarding of the feelings of Jewish students goes on unchallenged for four minutes. And when the NPR interviewer gingerly brings up the topic of Jewish students upset at antisemitic language being hurled at them during protests, Becher says the only antisemitism comes from the people who object to antisemitic language from the anti-Israel side:

MARTÍNEZ: What would you say, though, Professor, to a student, a Jewish student, who feels that maybe their - that what's going on now has gone to antisemitic language?

BECHER: I would say that antisemitism is something that needs to be approached seriously. It's everywhere. It is not a tool in a political game. And it's being used by Congress and universities in the last six months as a tool in politics. Antisemitism deserves rigor. That means we need procedures in place for investigations. What we don't need is panicking and caving in response to external pressure.

What we've seen is that congressional Republicans and Democrats are going along with those who are panicking, and the university is going along with the Republicans and Democrats and getting immediate results in the form of firing, suspensions and expulsions. That's political point scoring, not student well-being. And it's making it worse, not better. When the university uses this kind of disproportionate power in the interest of one group, supposedly, this is just going to reinforce for them and their peers the idea that Jews have disproportionate power, a core antisemitic belief.

Yes, protecting Jews on campus foments antisemitism, according to this as-a-Jew "authority."

And Becher herself admits that her own anti-Israel positions are based on ignorance of the topic she cares so much about. As she wrote in November for the Columbia Spectator in an article charging Israel with imminent genocide as well as apartheid:

Though in the past few weeks I signed letters written by groups of Columbia and Barnard faculty, this is my first time speaking publicly, in my own words. I am neither a long-term activist nor an expert on the issue or the region. I am writing this editorial to others like me: nonexperts and non-activists who have thus far been quiet, but who are terrified by what we have been seeing.

That article called on people to protest Israel without researching the actual issues ahead of time. Really: "As a Barnard student said to me yesterday, 'You can be learning and taking action at the same time; in urgent times, action has to come first.'"

An instructor at Barnard says that students should protest before knowing anything about the topic. Like her. This is today's academia.

It reminds me of this video recently posted of how ignorant the people jumping on the anti-Israel bandwagon are:

In short, Becher is a lying ignoramus who is teaching hundreds of students and is proud of her ignorance. And this makes her a perfect person to be interviewed by NPR.

To its tiniest credit, NPR added a footnote to the story: "In a statement to NPR, Columbia University said Columbia students have the right to protest, but they are not allowed to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students. They went on to say they are acting on concerns expressed by Jewish students to ensure the community remains safe." It completely contradicts what Becher claimed for the four minutes she was interviewed but it was not used to point out that she was lying about "peaceful protests" as well as about the safety of Jewish students on campus.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Earlier this week, Tunisia authorities canceled the annual pilgrimage to Djerba by Jews to celebrate Lag B'Omer, which is happening in a month.

The official reason was to maintain security on the island. But an article in Rai al-Youm makes it clear that it was an antisemitic decision - and Fawzi bin Younis bin Hadid is quite proud of that:

At this time every year, the island of Djerba turns into a military barracks to secure the Jews coming from Israel, from all parts of the world, and from within the island itself, to hold Passover rituals [sic] in the Jewish synagogue located area, which does not calm down day or night during that period. The island’s residents and other visitors suffer at this time of year from difficulty in moving to and from it, and they face great and extreme suffering in going to work in the morning and evening due to the large number of security checkpoints. As for those who come from outside it, they stand in lines at its entrances and exits and are asked where they came from and where they are going...

But we heard this year that these rituals were canceled. The cancellation came, according to what was said, at the request of some Djerba people from the Tunisian state, in order to preserve the feelings of the Tunisians and show solidarity with the people of Gaza, who suffered and are still suffering from the scourges of the Zionist army, bombing, destruction, killing, torture and abuse, in one of the most heinous humanitarian crimes in modern history committed by the Zionist machine and the Zionist occupation army on the proud land of Gaza.

Because we are an Arab Muslim people, we do not accept that the Jews rejoice over our precious land while they kill our people in Palestine, and the Zionists must understand that things have limits, and that the Islamic and Arab peoples boil like a pot boiling over a quiet fire...

...The Jews are by nature prone to aggression, arrogance, bullying, and absurdity. They ignore all international and international norms and resolutions, practice the law of the jungle in their dealings with humans, and are not held accountable for their crimes, which exceed the crimes of the entire world.

We were very happy with this decision this year because it gives the Tunisian citizen on the island of Djerba a large amount of freedom to move around and practice the teachings of Islamic law, and participate in establishing security and safety. In fact, the first and primary goal of the cancellation was to respect the feelings of more than 160,000 citizens who live on the island and defend their brothers in Gaza and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The subtext is that the Jews who live in Tunisia are not really full citizens of the country - only the Muslims are, and only the Muslims deserve full rights. Which is how the Jews were treated in Europe throughout the ages, too.

Bin Hadid has written for Al Mayadeen and Al Jazeera as well.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/24 Links: Campus Crazy Special Edition; A howl of rage against civilisation; Columbia prez must go: She’s now privileging antisemitic protesters over all other students

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: A howl of rage against civilisation

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Openly Jewish

Western societies need to realize – need to remember what we all once knew – that peace, order, and lawful freedoms all need to be actively and publicly maintained. This maintenance needs to come from the state, from civil society, and from all citizens as free individuals. We can no longer afford that tired old liberal myth of a neutral public space.

We cannot pretend that there is no difference between peaceful protests and those which come with a threat of Islamist violence. We cannot pretend that there is no difference between different conceptions of the good, of the just society, of human dignity.

We cannot be blind to the way that some Islamist groups – Hamas and Al-Quds supporters among them – have a pretty good grasp of how to wield power in the public square. They know how to exert pressure on agents of the state, and how to project political strength on the streets. This isn’t a naive phenomenon.

Islamism is a world where the minaret towers over all. It’s the burka’s flowing tendrils blanketing women like an invasive vine in a once-flourishing garden. It’s the gathering in the square that proclaims “this is our space now.” It’s the adhan blasted loudly at the Christian or Jewish – or secular! – part of town. Until, one day, there are no non-Muslim parts of town left. The Christians of Istanbul and the Jews of Baghdad found this out the hard way. I pray the monied agnostics of Mayfair and Chelsea never do.

And they may not have to! That is, perhaps the British state can learn to differentiate between legitimate protests (however misguided), and marches that proclaim conquest.

The West needs to recover and to actively, publicly promote some basic ideas about our shared public peace. About the common allegiances and responsibilities of citizens. The public square can certainly be tolerant of a great range of political and religious groups, but it can’t be neutral. Attempted public neutrality is a vacuum that less-than-benevolent groups are always ready to fill.

In a free and democratic society, the day-to-day politics of domestic government, foreign activities, finance, etc., must constantly be debated. This is right and just. But at the same time, Western democracies must demand – in the public square – loyalty not to wispy, vague ideas of procedural neutrality and skin-deep inclusivity. Instead, we need to be a lot better at articulating the importance of public peace, the legitimate authority of our states, mutual fraternity with our fellow citizens, respect for the law, and the dignity of all human beings.

This isn’t a big ask, and it isn’t bigotedly intolerant. A country can be sure of itself and of its fundamental requirements, and still accept newcomers or visitors. Bluntly, people should normally be free to protest against a government’s foreign policy, or to stand in solidarity with those they think are oppressed overseas. But the political deal needs to be clearer, and straightforwardly articulated: the rejection of intimidation, violence, anti-Semitic extremism, and the pursuit of power by unconstitutional means. It’s the difference between having a law-abiding, European-style social democratic party in a country’s parliament, and tolerating organized political violence or state espionage by Communist groups. Western states sometimes benefit from the former, but must have the self-assurance to stamp out the latter.

If we don’t get better at doing this, our public square will be more and more vulnerable to hostile takeover. The present moment is a canary in the coal mine. If we don’t get better at doing this, we risk seeing more of our fellow citizens grimly warned of the dangers of being “openly Jewish.”

Why Anti-Israel Protesters Won’t Stop Harassing Jews The movement’s ideological character invites rage and violence.

The anti-Israel movement exists in the United States as a result of a decades-long conflict in the Middle East, the cause of which is complex and has faults on many sides. It was both inevitable and necessary for the United States to have a pro-Palestinian movement. The makeup of that movement is the contingent, tragic factor that has made its activities so ugly and routinely bigoted.

The main national umbrella group for campus pro-Palestinian protests is Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP takes a violent eliminationist stance toward Israel. In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks, it issued a celebratory statement instructing its affiliates that all Jewish Israelis are legitimate targets:
Liberation is not an abstract concept. It is not a moment circumscribed to a revolutionary past as it is often characterized. Rather, liberating colonized land is a real process that requires confrontation by any means necessary. In essence, decolonization is a call to action, a commitment to the restoration of Indigenous sovereignty. It calls upon us to engage in meaningful actions that go beyond symbolism and rhetoric. Resistance comes in all forms — armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.

SJP likewise directed its members to join the struggle directly: “This is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”

When you consider this kind of violent rhetoric in the context of slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” especially when you consider the lack of authentic Israeli military targets outside of Israel, then the pattern of harassment and violence that follows from this propaganda is inevitable.

A second group that has helped organize the demonstrations at Columbia is called Within Our Lifetime. Like SJP, WOL takes an uncompromising eliminationist stance toward Israel, even calling for “the abolition of zionism.” If you suspect it would be difficult to exterminate an idea peacefully, you are correct. WOL, like SJP, endorses all violent attacks on Israeli Jews: “We defend the right of Palestinians as colonized people to resist the zionist occupation by any means necessary.”

More pertinently, WOL “reject[s] all collaboration and dialogue with zionist organizations” as “normalization,” which is to say it believes people anywhere in the world who wish to see a Jewish state survive in any form should not be permitted to live normal lives. If there is a theoretical distinction between this doctrine and direct advocacy of systematic harassment of mainstream Jewish people and organizations, it is paper thin.

Chag sameach!

I asked an AI to give me a picture of the biblical plague of frogs. One of the results was properly terrifying: flying frogs.

I wondered if there was a midrash that mentions flying frogs, and the answer is not exactly, but one authority believes that the Hebrew word for frog, tzefardaya, is really two words - tzipor and de'ah, bird and knowledge.

Wishing everyone* who celebrates Pesach a chag kosher v'sameach!

I won't be blogging until Thursday morning.

* Not including those who use it as another Jew-washing excuse to bash Israel

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/22 Links Pt2: With empty chairs and forlorn homes, Israelis prepare for solemn Passover; We must not fund UNRWA; Jewish Democrats, wake up!

From Ian:

With empty chairs and forlorn homes, Israelis prepare for solemn Passover

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.

How the Israel-Hamas War shadow looms over the Passover Seder

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.

On this holiday of freedom, demand the release of the hostages. #BringThemHomeNow #LetMyPeopleGo pic.twitter.com/jgROLhUTco
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) April 22, 2024

Prime Minister’s Office: ‘No family in the world should celebrate like this’

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.

From Times of Israel:

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.

The suspects came from Hebron, and went out to hunt Jews. Not Israelis, not Zionists: Jews.

The video shows how bad things could have been had the gun not jammed.

I can't believe the two people who flew in the air are only "lightly" injured.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Why poor Christians used to hang matzah in their homes

Here is one of the earliest descriptions of how Jews celebrate Passover I could find in a newspaper account. From The Bath Chronicle, Bath, Avon, England , April 16, 1789:

Friday 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.

Then comes mention of a custom among Christians that I had never heard of, and cannot find any other mention of.

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.

Well, I can verify that matzoh tastes exactly the same after several years in an unopened box. If the matzah is hung carefully, the homeowner indeed would never be without bread.*

It is possible that the Christians got the custom from Jews who would bake a matzah-like cracker on the day before Passover to create an eruv chatzeirot where communal bread would be gathered and in some communities hung on the wall of the the synagogue; the custom was for it to last an entire year.

The description goes on:

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,.

In case you are wondering, "&c." used to be a popular way of writing "etc."

* It is actually not so clear that matzah in 1789 England was the hard cracker like matzah of today. Matzah at that time was thin but not necessarily hard; from various sources it appears that soft matzah would go bad or moldy like bread would and making it on Passover itself would be difficult, so over time the cracker-type became more popular since it was easier to manufacture ahead of time and to store.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/22 Links Pt1: United States of Charlottesville; At Columbia I Am Told: ‘Go Back to Poland’; Fatah: Hamas kills aid workers and steals food for itself

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: United States of Charlottesville

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.

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.

At Columbia I Am Told: ‘Go Back to Poland’

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.

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.”

Brendan O'Neill: A howl of rage against civilisation

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.

This neatly lettered prayer was composed by two rabbis in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp before Passover, 1944.

From the United States Holocaust Museum:

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.

Both Rabbi Levisson and Rabbi Davids died, probably of exhaustion and starvation, shortly before liberation in the spring of 1945.

(h/t R' Dovid Bashevkin)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Is the Nasser hospital mass grave of bodies "buried by Israel" the same one Palestinians themselves dug in January? (UPDATE: Yes.)

The Daily Mail reports:

Nearly 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.

Hamas adds lurid details, claiming that there was evidence of torture and (impossible) organ theft, as well as patients shot at from behind and other quite unlikely stories. As usual, when Western news agencies rely on Hamas for their stories, they leave out the accusations that would indicate that the stories are fiction.

There is other evidence that this is fake news, though.

Earlier this year, there was another story about a mass grave in the Nasser hospital courtyard. This one was dug by Palestinians, as this January 28 report from NBC News says:

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."

So her son admits that this was a Palestinian mass grave, not an Israeli one.

This is not definitive proof. The location could be different than the earlier grave. Maybe the hospital has two yards. But it does seem strange that a freshly dug gravesite adjacent to the hospital was not noticed for the two weeks since the IDF withdrew from the area.

France24 says the IDF is checking the reports.

UPDATE: As soon as I posted this, @ADX666 tweeted to me that an open source intel site had confirmed it is the exact same gravesite (webpage version here.)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Three weeks ago, a new Palestinian cabinet was announced under the leadership of latest appointed prime minister Muhammad Mustafa. Mustafa himself also became the foreign minister under this government.

No one really thought that anything would change. Mustafa has been an aide to Abbas and won't do anything that Abbas wouldn't want him to.

But something interesting happened on Sunday which shows even more blatantly that the Palestinian Authority is a dictatorship under Abbas, and nothing else matters.

The previous foreign minister was Riyad Maliki. Don't worry about him being unemployed, though - he landed on his feet in a brand new role that Abbas just made up: " Advisor to the President of the State for International Affairs and his Special Envoy" with a rank of ....Minister.

It sure sounds like Abbas wants his own foreign minister who reports directly to him, and he is spitting in the face of his new prime minister who has just become impotent in foreign affairs. Maliki already has connections to foreign leaders and Abbas will make sure that his new job will be an extension of his old job.

This is the sort of corruption that happens constantly under the Palestinian Authority - the government that the world wants to take over Gaza. Yet while the Western media is keenly interested in any whiff of controversy in Israel's government, with countless articles about judicial reform, here we have the head of the Palestinian Authority, and the PLO, and Fatah, publicly adding some additional powers - and no one is saying a word.

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Columbia University rabbi tells Jewish students to go home for their own safety

Here is a video from Columbia University last night:

As described by @LawyerGoneRogue,

Violence 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!!!!!

That account has a series of videos from Columbia last night.

Some chants called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews in the Middle East: “Settlers, settlers, go back home. Palestine is ours alone.”

Here is one student suggesting Hamas should kill pro-Israel counter-protesters.

This is utterly unacceptable in any public space, let alone a campus that should be safe for all. And there are no threats nor violence from the pro-Israel counter-protesters - the only people in danger are Jews.

The OU-JLIC rabbi at Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Rabbi Elie Buechler, issued a statement today telling Jews that they are not safe on campus:

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 Buechler
Director OU-JLIC at Columbia/Barnard

I've never seen any announcement like that on any campus from any religious or ethnic group.

The New York Post adds:

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.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/21 Links: Netanyahu: Hamas to face ‘painful blows’ in the coming days; Assume Hamas leaders receive UNRWA funding; Columbia rabbi warns Jewish students to go home

From Ian:

Biden’s ‘starvation politics’ help with his base

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.

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."

Israel Is Hamas’s Most Potent Weapon

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.

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.

‘Assume Hamas leaders receive UNRWA funding’

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.”