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the-light-of-stars · 7 months

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Another news item:

The german government is currently in the process of creating laws for the prohibition and judical persecution of members or sympathisers of not just hamas but a palestinian organisation called Samidoun, a "network for solidarity with palestinian prisoners" and is considering to outlaw more pro-palestinian organisations, including BDS, calling them extremist terrorist organisations.

here some excerpts from the second article, detailing three organisations that are deemed "antisemitic terrorist organisations" , which the german state either is currently in the process of outlawing with threat of prosecution in courts of law or deportation, or whose outlawing it is currently considering :

" Samidoun: Chancellor Scholz has announced a ban of activity for this group as well [context: the other group he announced a ban for is hamas itself] . According to the Security Bureaus Samidoun does not have solid structures in Germany. The group is a network for support of imprisoned palestinians and developed as part of the marxist-leninist PFLP, the popular front for the liberation of palestine.

Samidoun reacted "scandalized" to the announced ban. On its website the network speaks of a "racist hate campaign" of the german press "against palestinian and arab youth in germany and especially against the Samidoun-network" . [According to the network] the german state is a partner in the defamation and dehumanisation of the palestinian people as well as a partner of "the murderous war crimes and crimes against humanity of the occupational regime"

"PFLP: The popular front for the liberation of palestine, in short: PFLP, exists since 1967 and caused Fear and Horror in the 1970s , among other things via multiple airplane hijackings - among those the bloody highjacking of the Lufthansa-plane "Landshut" in the year 1977. Until today it is committing attacks in Israel. The EU lists it as a terror-organisation since 2002.

In germany the PFLP has not been outlawed so far, since according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution it is not "terroristically active" here. However, so the Report on Protection of the Constitution for the year 2022 says, former terrorists are enjoying great recognition among its followers and "are specifically getting invited into germany for indoctrination purposes".

The PFLP counts roughly 100 members in germany. It follows a marxist-leninist ideology, wants a socialist palestinian state and denies Israel's right to existence."

"BDS: BDS stands for "Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions" and is an international palestinian movement that exists since 2005 and has an active following even in germany. The movement calls for science and students not to work together with israeli universities and institutions. Cultural institutions in Israel are supposed to be boycotted as well.

It also is directed against companies, who BDS claims support "Israel's politics of occupation, colonialism and apartheid" and calls for international sanctions against Israel. The BDS movement has not only palestinian followers but has followers in Germany as well, even in the so called civil milieu [context: they mean middle and upper middle class academics and other civilians] . According to the ARD-capital city studio and SWR's informations [two state sponsored news channels] the movement is being watched by the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution and is listed as "an extremist suspect".

The german federal parliament accepted a comprehensive proposal by CDU/CSU [conservatives], SPD [social democrats] , FDP [liberals] and large parts of the Greens [progressives] , in which the BDS movement is described as an "allencompassing call for boycott" and gets condemned heavily. With this proposal the federal government, so it is said, is decidedly standing against any form of antisemitism even in its beginning stages.

Projects that support the BDS movement must not be allowed financial support, so it was said. BDS activists have sued against this proposition in front of the Berlin high administrative court, without success.

Currently BDS is organising demonstrations and "vigils for palestine" in all of germany, which in parts have been prohibited."

#german stuff #palestine #israel #gaza #politics #current events

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eretzyisrael · 2 months

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This evening, the House of Commons voted to pass a shameful motion on the Israel-Hamas war, brought forward by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP and supported in an amended version by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Government.

While the motion doesn’t change Canada’s formal foreign policy, elements of its text are disturbing and unacceptable. Some provisions ultimately reward Palestinian extremists and undermine the security of the people of Israel—a democratic Canadian ally—including:

A call for an arms embargo on Israel, precisely when Israelis are fighting a defensive war launched by a recognized terrorist group; and

Reaffirmation of Canadian funding for UNRWA, despite evidence that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th atrocities.

Tonight’s vote needs to be condemned for what it was: a slap in the face not only to our allies in Israel, but also to Jewish Canadians—just five months after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

But our community can draw strength from our strong, united response in this moment of truth for Canada’s leaders.

In recent days, Jews and allies across Canada mobilized against the motion, including through the efforts of UJA, our advocacy agent the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), partner Federations, and other Jewish organizations. As just one example of our community’s strength, in a matter of days we collectively sent more than 900,000 emails to MPs through CIJA’s action alert system.

This strong, vocal stand was instrumental in ensuring a key clause—unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state—was cut from the motion in a last-minute amendment. This removed a critical demand of the anti-Israel movement, one that would have contradicted Canada’s longstanding policy that Palestinian statehood can only be reached through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Importantly, the motion was also amended to call for the release of all hostages and demand that Hamas lay down its arms.

Despite these changes, tonight’s vote reflects something we’ve seen far too often since October 7th: the shameful accommodation of radical voices. But our community will never stop fighting for the truth, for our values as Jews, and for the principles that have been core to Canadian democracy. Because to be Jewish has always meant to fight for what’s right, even when the odds are against us.

We will do so with profound appreciation for those MPs who opposed tonight’s motion—particularly Pierre Poilievre's Official Opposition Conservatives, as well as several members of the Liberal caucus.

Adam Minsky President & CEO

Mar 19, 2024

#canada #house of commons #anti-israel resolution #jagmeet singh #justin trudeau #arms embargo

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tomorrowusa · 7 months

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Until this month, Bibi Netanyahu was a HŪGE fanboy of Hamas. Their relationship goes back decades. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory. Much of the information about this comes from mainstream Israeli media and high ranking Israeli former officials.

Here are excerpts from an in-depth article at the CBC – Canada's public broadcaster.

Israelis don't agree on much, especially lately, but polling shows they mostly agree that Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas's onslaught on October 7. The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace. "There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground." "(Hamas and Netanyahu) are mutually reinforcing, in the sense that they provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution," Zonszein told CBC News from Tel Aviv.

Bibi and Hamas could be called "frenemies".

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister." In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

The Bibi-Hamas relationship goes back almost 30 years. In some ways, Hamas helped put Bibi in power in the first place.

Netanyahu first came to power in the 1996 election that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords. Early polls showed Rabin's successor Shimon Peres comfortably ahead. Determined to sabotage Oslo, Hamas embarked on a ruthless suicide bombing campaign that helped Netanyahu pull ahead of Peres and win the election on May 29, 1996. Today, some of the same extremists who called for Rabin's death hold power in Netanyahu's government.

A reminder that the current Israeli government led by Netanyahu is the most far right in Israel's history. Netanyahu filled it with extremists, religious fanatics, and virulent ethno-nationalists in order to stay in power.

Just two weeks before Rabin's assassination, a young settler extremist posed for the cameras with a Cadillac hood ornament he said he had stolen from Rabin's car. "Just like we got to this emblem," he said, "we could get to Rabin." Today, that young man, Itamar Ben Gvir, is 45 years old and has eight Israeli criminal convictions — including convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. Once he was rejected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for his extremist views. Now, Israel's police must answer to him as Benjamin Netanyahu's minister of national security.

Imagine how a second Trump administration would be and you get a hint of what Bibi's pre-October 7th cabinet was like.

The Bibi-Hamas connection only gets worse.

Netanyahu's hawkish defence minister Avigdor Liberman was the first to report in 2020 that Bibi had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the IDF's officer in charge of Gaza, Herzi Halevi, to Doha to "beg" the Qataris to continue to send money to Hamas. "Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas," the right-wing leader complained. A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."

Yep, Bibi actually had a bag man deliver cash to Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority's Ahmed Majdalani accused the Qatari envoy of carrying money to Hamas "like a gangster." "The PLO did not agree to the deal facilitating the money to Hamas that way," he said.

Netanyahu fancies himself as a clever Machiavellian playing one side against the other. He has even bragged of this to members of his party.

On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority, according to the Jerusalem Post: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported. "The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Of course Bibi was ultimately being too clever by half.

Netanyahu insisted that neither the money nor the construction material given to Hamas would be diverted to military purposes. But today, the IDF finds itself showing how Hamas has done exactly that — by diverting and converting civilian funds and materials to warlike purposes. The military tried to warn him at the time, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Ma'ariv newspaper. He said Netanyahu acted "in total opposition to the national assessment of the National Security Council, which determined that there was a need to disconnect from the Palestinians and establish two states."

A lot of radical chic Hamas fans in Western countries will undoubtedly try to obscure the fact that they are cheering the same group which a far right Israeli politician (until recently) has been lavishing with tons of cash.

And the Bibi-Hamas connection is a reminder that while far right politicians in many countries like to portray themselves as tough on security, they will usually put their craven lust for power above all.

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mariacallous · 4 months

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Though the Take Our Border Back convoy has largely been a mess so far as the small group makes its way toward the Texas-Mexico border, experts warn that it has acted as a lightning rod for militias, far-right extremists, and even long-dormant vigilante groups. It could reach a tipping point this weekend, as multiple rallies are planned against immigrants and the Biden administration along the border in Texas, as well as Arizona and California.

“Data we collected tells us emphatically that the standoff between Texas and the federal government has become a magnet for far-right vigilantism,” said Devin Burghart, the executive director at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, during a press briefing on Thursday organized by the immigration reform group America’s Voice. “From the convoy steering committee on down, the protest comprises many of the same dangerous elements as the January 6 insurrection: militia members, election deniers, QAnon conspiracists, Covid deniers, and other hardcore far-righters.”

Those groups include the Proud Boys, neo-Nazi militias, and other vigilante groups. Last week, the Republic of Texas Proud Boys shared a post in its Telegram channel calling immigrants “brown immigrant invaders,” and the South Texas Proud Boys told followers to “grab your guns.” Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi Aryan Network issued a rallying cry in support of the Texas ‘resistance,’ asking for white men to join. In another post, the group added, “to hell with the United States of America.”

“The convoy itself has really inspired some of these more fringe, really extreme sects of the far right to engage in operations down in border states,” said Freddy Cruz, the program manager for monitoring and training at Western States Center, during the briefing. “Discussions around the convoy and just the convoy itself really animate extreme anti-democracy groups to go down to the border.”

The convoy had an inauspicious start; just 19 vehicles set out from Virginia on Monday, and within minutes some were lost. There has been paranoia and infighting within the small group, and a convicted pedophile showed up. But on Thursday night, when the convoy organizers held a rally at the One Shot Distillery and Brewery, owned by former US Army colonel Phil Waldron, who was a key figure in proposing plans that ultimately led to the January 6 insurrection, a different picture emerged.

Hundreds of people gathered at the event, which featured far-right speakers that included Chrisitan nationalist pastors calling for “drawing a blood line around Texas, around America.” Convicted January 6 insurrectionists threatened another insurrection. There were Covid deniers, Pizzagate adherents, and sovereign citizens. Former conservative news presenter turned conspiracy booster Lara Logan was also onstage, talking in graphic detail about child trafficking and the dark web. Michael Yon, one of the convoy promoters, screamed and ranted at the audience about how Jewish people were funding an NGO that works along the Texas border. He also claimed that Hamas and Hezbollah are coming across the border: “Allahu akbar, when you hear that shit, you better get ready, your thumb better be hitting that safety.”

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the late senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign running mate, introduced musician Ted Nugent, who called President Biden a “piece of shit.”

Elected officials were also present: Republican Texas state representative Carrie Isaac repeated the conspiracy about “terrorists at the border.” She was introduced onstage by Chris Burr, a board member of the Texas GOP.

Though tensions surrounding immigration have been simmering for a while, the most recent crisis was sparked earlier this month when the US Supreme Court lifted an order by a lower court and sided with the Biden administration to rule that Border Patrol agents could remove razor wire installed by the Texas National Guard and state troopers. Rather than stand down, Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, replied in a letter that Texas has the right to “defend and protect” itself against an “invasion” of migrants, adding that this “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

The vast majority of the GOP has backed Abbott, including more than two dozen Republican governors, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and former president Donald Trump, who called for National Guard troops from other states to be sent to Texas.

The rhetoric from the right has continued to ratchet up. “This is an invasion from third-world countries,”Texas’ lieutenant governor Dan Patrick told Fox News. “They're coming here with health issues, they're uneducated, unemployed, and all they do is commit crime on the streets.”

Since the standoff began, there has been “an online explosion of invasion and great replacement rhetoric, the idea that white people are somehow being displaced intentionally with immigrants,” said Heidi Beirich, cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “We've seen white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups all taking advantage of the standoff to push their propaganda and recruit new members.”

On Friday, the convoy will reportedly conclude in Quemado, Texas, and the Cornerstone Children’s Ranch, a humanitarian charity which provides food and support for low-income families in the US and across the border in Mexico. “The people that are coming here are doing a religious prayer for the border,” Lori Mercer, the director of the organization tells WIRED, adding: “We have to be peacemakers.”

The location was picked by Pete Chambers, one of the people organizing the convoy, who claims to be a former Green Beret. Last week, Chambers spoke with school-shooting conspiracist Alex Jones about how the convoy planned to travel to the border to hunt migrants in collaboration with sympathetic law enforcement. Other convoy organizers have said that the effort is “peaceful” and that they are not going to the border. But comments made by members of the group on livestreams, online videos, and in Telegram channels indicate that not everyone feels that way.

“We will engage decisively, and if it gets worse, in the infantry we call it ‘fix bayonets,’” Chambers told a pastor in one online video this week, adding: “That’s war, we don’t want to go there, but that’s where we’re at right now.”

On Saturday, the group will take part in a trio of rallies along the border: in San Ysidro, California; Yuma, Arizona; and Eagle Pass, Texas, the epicenter of the current standoff between Abbott and the Biden administration.

“They've discussed calling out militias or posses and needing to ‘show force,’” said Burghart. “One organizer, who is also a militia leader, even threatened, ‘We'll do whatever we got to do to put a stop to it.’ Leading border-conflict figures have also stated that their convoy is meant to pick up where January 6 left off. Moreover, they've amplified the specter of kicking off a second civil war.”

While it’s unclear what is going to happen over the weekend, there are already signs that the convoy and the standoff generally are activating long-dormant vigilante groups.

“Earlier this week, we did see vigilante group Women Fighting for America in Arizona livestreaming the group's expedition to try and track down a migrant camp in Arivaca, Arizona,” Cruz said. “Women Fighting for America have previously been on the border, but they took a two-year hiatus, and all of a sudden they're back on the border because the media is covering the convoy.”

In a video posted in the group’s Telegram channel, Christine Hutcherson, Women Fighting for America’s founder, is seen wearing night-vision goggles, talking about a camp run by a Catholic charity set in a remote part of the Arizona border region. “I’ve been here before a couple of years ago. They are housing migrants, illegals, mostly single adult males of fighting age. And we’re getting ready to go into this camp right now,” she alleged.

Experts are concerned about the impact of this kind of extremist rhetoric long term. “It’s important to keep an eye on how these types of efforts are successful in mainstreaming fringe far-right ideas and far-right groups into a much larger context,” said Burghart.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month

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Sanjana Karanth at HuffPost:

Israel’s far-right national security minister has reportedly asked whether the military could kill some of the Palestinians taken captive instead of arresting them — the latest comment by one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s multiple extremist cabinet members that dehumanizes residents of Gaza.

The comments by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir were revealed Friday by Hebrew outlets Channel 12 and Ynet, and translated to English by the Times of Israel. The Israeli Defense Force’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, briefed ministers at a security cabinet meeting last week about recent operations in Gaza, where Israel has been carrying out a military offensive for almost seven months now in response to Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people and captured roughly 250. During the briefing, Halevi said that hundreds of Palestinians were recently arrested after surrendering to the military. “Why are there so many arrests?” Ben-Gvir allegedly asked. “Can’t you kill some? Do you want to tell me they all surrender? What are we to do with so many arrested? It’s dangerous for the soldiers.” Halevi was perplexed at the question, according to the Times of Israel, responding: “Dangerous for who?”

“We don’t shoot people who come out with their hands up. We shoot those who fight us,” the IDF official reportedly told Ben-Gvir. “There’s no dilemma here. Those who surrender, we arrest.”

[...] Friday was not the first time that Ben-Gvir reportedly called for executing Palestinian captives. Earlier this month, the minister posted on social media that applying the death penalty to some captives would help address the issue of prison overcrowding. The comment came after his proposal to build nearly a thousand additional “prison places” for Palestinian captives was approved. “The additional construction will allow the prison service to take in more terrorists and will bring a partial solution to the overcrowding crisis,” he wrote, according to a translation. “The death penalty for terrorists is the right solution to the overcrowding problem, until then — glad that the government approved the proposal I brought.”

In February, Ben-Gvir also called for the IDF to shoot Palestinian women and children in Gaza in order to “protect” the troops. “There cannot be a situation in which children and women approach us from the wall,” he told Halevi, according to Israeli media. “Anyone who approaches in order to harm security must receive a bullet, otherwise we will see Oct. 7 again.”

Under international law, killing prisoners of war is considered a war crime. Israel already stands accused at the international level of committing genocide against Palestinians, which it vehemently denies. But the indiscriminate killing that has led to more than 34,000 dead Gazans, the settler violence in the occupied West Bank, the blocking of life-saving aid and the dehumanizing language used to describe Palestinians has drawn the ire of human rights groups and a growing number of countries — including Israel’s biggest ally and weapons supplier, the United States. The Biden administration has made its position clear that it opposes Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet members — including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Dichter and Ben-Gvir — who call for the expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza and the return of Jewish settlements. Ben-Gvir specifically faced anger from within the Israeli government in February after telling The Wall Street Journal that Biden is hindering their military campaign, and that former President Donald Trump would allow more freedom to fight in Gaza if he were in power.

Genocidal maniac Israel Apartheid State National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir asks Israel Occupation Forces to shoot dead captured Palestinians.

#Itamar Ben Gvir #Israel/Palestine Conflict #Israel/Hamas War #Hate Speech #Israel Occupation Forces #Israel Defense Forces #Israel Apartheid State

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randomnoteforfuturereference · 4 months

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Those who go "Criticizing the Israeli government isn't antisemitic... but accusing it of apartheid or genocide is" do themselves no favors. Nor do they do Israel any favors in the long term.

Before I proceed, I need to make clear (both to Israelis as well as "antizionists"/tankies) when the accusation is paired with a declaration that Israel shouldn't exist, I'll agree that's when we get into antisemitism. After all, it'd be baffling to say that Serbia, China, or Sudan should cease existing for their part in genocide within the past 3 decades (not to be confused with the stance that certain parts of those nations have full grounds to break away), and only a relative fringe (your daily reminder that tumblr/twitter is not real life) will say the same about all the countries in the Americas.

Setting that aside, my issue is declaring that you can't say genocide or apartheid takes the teeth out of arguments to make them palatable for the political establishment.

Usually when I see people deny that apartheid, they bring up how Israeli Arabs have all the rights of citizenry. Except they fail to address how the accusation is leveled primarily at Israel's treatment of the West Bank (the settlements fulfill the literal translation of the "apartheid"). Or how within Israel proper, you can see a concerted campaign by the right to further marginalize Arab communities; from Netanyahu declaring Arab voters a fifth column, to the clear intent of the "nation state law", to incitement of violence from mobs and MKs.

Standing Together elaborates on the apartheid element:

Now for the genocide part, one could argue about the whether this actually meets the academic definition. However I'd still argue that by itself, accusing the Israeli government of genocide isn't inherently antisemitic even if it's frequently stated by those who are. Death toll aside, if you not only look at the progressive nature of the evacuation orders that pushes Gazans into an ever shrinking "safe zone" with no provision for return, it's not hard for it to meet at least the ethnic cleansing criteria.

Importantly, the Israeli government has done nothing to reign in extremism. By not shutting down its genocidal members (who are signaling that they want to resettle Gaza) or doing anything more than wrist-slapping mobs, it essentially approves that ideology. So while Israelis as a whole aren't genocidal, those who are are where it counts. Which then is where you have intent, regardless of Bibi's English statements to the world.

Also, no, not everyone who suffers deprivation or hardship is gonna become a genocidal terrorist. But it's well-documented that such conditions do make it easier for extremist groups to gain influence and recruit. In that regard, I argue that "Oct 7 was a natural consequence" is also a harsh but valid statement; not just due to conditions that make it easier for Hamas to get control (and gain popularity in the WB) but also because it's clear as day that the far-right coalition's push for WB occupation actually weakened Israeli security.

And comparing yourself to the conduct of Hamas or any of the Arab states to make yourself look better is an utter fallacy.

It's fair to point out the hypocrisy of those who level the accusations but don't say a peep about Russia or China (or how Arab states treat Palestinian refugees for that matter). And I think it's fair to ask anyone who comes out with such an accusation to clarify if they are just critiquing your gov/military's actions or your very existence.

But when "It's fair to criticize Israel" is repeatedly followed by "Not like That", it raises the question as to whether you really are inviting criticism of Israeli policy. Because hating Bibi is easy; harder is addressing the conditions that allowed him to come to power and the long-term ramifications.

#israel palestine conflict #israel

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months

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A reflection on the terrorist attack on Israel through the lens of America.

October 9, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

About 30 seconds after I pressed “send” on Friday’s newsletter, I received an alert regarding a surprise attack on Israel by Hamas. By the next morning, it was clear that the strike was the largest terrorist attack on Israel in its modern history. For a small country, approximately 700 deaths are the equivalent of 25,000 in the US. That horrific reality was compounded by several factors, including Hamas’s gruesome use of social media to display dead bodies and civilian hostages, that the attack was launched on a Jewish holiday, and that there were “celebrations” around the world in response to the killing and capture of Israeli civilians.

For Jews in America, the attack comes at a time of increasing antisemitism in the US. Right-wing extremists spew a toxic mix of white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and antisemitism fueled by grievance over losing white dominance. Last week, a mayoral candidate in a small town 20 miles south of Nashville showed up to a debate flanked by the “Tennessee Active Club”—a group that includes white supremacists and neo-Nazis who glorify Hitler, deny the Holocaust, and use the slogan, “Remember, there is no political solution.”

The mayoral candidate (Gabrielle Hanson) denies she supports neo-Nazis, but after being called out by the local newspaper for using neo-Nazi “enforcers” at the debate, she sent a campaign promotion featuring some of the same neo-Nazis who provided “protection” for her at the debate. The message was clear to those in the small Tennessee town: Gabrielle Hanson hangs out with neo-Nazis and wants your vote. It starts with a wink and nod among brothers in hate and ends in genocide. It must stop now, and we must be the ones to stop it.

The increasing antisemitism in the US places a special burden on all Americans to recognize that the attack directed at Jewish civilians has deep resonance with millennia of efforts to stigmatize and blame Jewish people for imagined grievances and vile conspiracy theories. Whatever you think about the maddeningly complicated politics in the Middle East, there is no excuse for targeting, torturing, and using civilians as hostages.

Jewish Americans are rightly anxious, frightened, and wary that it could happen again because antisemitism has gone mainstream in the Republican Party. Republicans in Florida, Texas, Missouri, and other states are banning “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Maus,” and other books about the Holocaust because they do not want school children to know or remember about a genocide that happened during their grandparents’ lifetimes.

We need to tell all Jewish Americans that we are by their side and will stand between them and the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and messengers of hate recruited and infected by the virus of MAGA extremism. We need to speak out against antisemitism to protect our friends, neighbors, and strangers who are fearful about what happens next.

Coda.

A few minutes after I wrote the above introduction, a reader sent me the following email from an Israeli American who sent an email to her friends to explain how Jews across the world feel. I have excerpted (and lightly edited) two paragraphs from a much longer email:

Your Jewish friends are hurting. We are grateful to the ones who can pluck up the courage to get in touch and to check on our loved ones. We are moved to tears, after years of antisemitism at what we thought was already a fever pitch in the US, and while bracing for the wave that is already beginning, that some of you will even go as far as to publicly post that the murder of Jewish civilians is not okay. We are so inured to people being not just okay with but supportive of the death of Jews, that just a simple social media post that says "Maybe treat Jews like they're human for five minutes before explaining why this is actually their fault” seems radical. Because even just that is so, so rare. Instead, we get a million explainers about why this is justified, why Israelis deserve this, why we only have ourselves to blame. With not even one moment, one breath spared for the intense, irrepressible pain we are in as we try to track down our loved ones, hold space for our community members who are suffering, and brace with fear at what the suffering that is coming next, on both sides of the border.

What the terrorist attack on Israel means in the US.

There is so much to say about the attack on Israel I will attempt to be brief to cover more ground.

1. The attack took place during a time of deep political division in Israel.

The current government coalition has been attempting to undermine the judiciary to maintain political power—a tactic that has deeply divided the Israeli people. See Lawrence Freedman on Substack, Hamas attacks Israel | Why Now and What Next? Per Freedman,

[T]he coalition’s policies on judicial reform left Israeli society deeply divided, something of which Hamas will have been well aware . . . .

When a nation is deeply divided by political strife, its enemies seek advantage. That is why the MAGA culture war benefits America’s adversaries, especially Russia and China.

2. Republicans have hollowed out the American diplomatic corps.

Republicans have resisted the routine confirmation of Joe Biden’s diplomatic appointments. The following US diplomatic posts in the Middle East are vacant:

- Israel

- Egypt

- Lebanon

- Oman

- Kuwait

- No confirmed top USAID official for the Middle East for nearly three years

3. Senator Tommy Tuberville is hampering US military preparedness.

Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville has prevented the appointment of 300 senior officers in the US military.

4. The absence of a governing majority in the House has hampered the US’s ability to respond.

There is much media attention to the fact that the absence of a Speaker is limiting the ability of the House to support a US response to the attack. While that is true as far as it goes, the absence of a Speaker is the symptom, not the cause. The GOP caucus is incapable of governing.

Republicans must be able to join Democrats to advance America’s interests without incurring primary challenges from neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Moms for Liberty, or other extremist candidates funded by GOP dark money.

5. Disinformation is rampant.

Disinformation about the terrorist attack and response is rampant. Elon Musk recommended two sites for war coverage on Twitter that are known for peddling false stories to gain subscribers. Worse, one site Musk recommended for war coverage includes antisemitic content. See Washington Post, As false war information spreads on X, Musk promotes unvetted accounts.

Separately, Republican presidential candidates have been spreading the false claim that the Biden administration’s release of a hold on $6 billion in impounded Iranian funds was used to finance Hamas’s attack. That claim is false. See The Hill, $6B in frozen Iranian funds remain unspent in wake of Hamas attack, Blinken says. The $6 billion remains in a monitored bank account cannot be released except for humanitarian aid.

Those facts did not prevent Nikki Haley from claiming that the Biden administration is at fault for the Hamas attack because it allowed the Iranian government “to move money around” in anticipation of the release of the impounded funds. She should be ashamed of herself for lying—assuming she has the capacity for shame.

6. Trump's battles with the US intelligence community have undermined trust in those agencies.

Trump has been at war with the intelligence community ever since it concluded that Russia intervened in 2016 (and later, 2020) elections to help Trump. Per his playbook, Trump attacked the messenger. Then, when he was caught divulging secrets to top Russian diplomats and retaining defense secrets, he once again blamed the intelligence community. See, e.g., NYTimes, Unwanted Truths: Inside Trump’s Battles With U.S. Intelligence Agencies. The article reveals that the US intelligence community began to shade its conclusions to avoid upsetting Trump.

It is too early to assign blame for the fact that Israel was caught off guard by the attack. But, at this early point, it is difficult to understand the failures of both the Israeli and US intelligence agencies. I am not saying that Trump's attacks on the US intelligence community are a proximate cause of the lack of preparedness. But Trump has caused congressional Republicans to view the intelligence community as an adversary. It is not; it is essential to America’s defense in a dangerous world—as the surprise attack on Israel demonstrates.

Concluding Thoughts.

Writing about politics in the Mideast is difficult. The above comments are mine alone, but I thank readers (and friends) Dennis Aftergut and Susan Morgan for helping me to shape my thoughts about tonight’s newsletter. My unerring Managing Editor provided more than her usual amount of guidance for this newsletter. And a half-dozen readers sent links to helpful articles. Thank you.

The status of Gaza and the West Bank are difficult issues about which Israel’s major political parties and citizens disagree. We can’t expect to resolve those issues for Israel and the Palestinians, though we can stand ready to guarantee the terms of any peace and governance framework.

Sadly, the point of the terror attack on Israel was to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia (among others) as a precursor to a peace framework. Hamas’s goal is to prevent peace and stability in the Mideast—a development that would make its structural opposition to Israel’s legitimacy irrelevant and unnecessary.

The US has a delicate and important role to play—which is why having Joe Biden as President at this moment is important and fortunate. The US is moving a carrier strike group into the Eastern Mediterranean. The carrier strike group will provide air defense to discourage involvement by Iran or Syria. Major military moves—and the possibility of command decisions to engage in combat—are not the type of judgments that should be in the hands of an impulsive, immature, petulant, distracted, and ignorant leader like Trump.

Republicans are suddenly in a panic about the absence of a speaker of the House and are considering re-electing Kevin McCarthy—because they know that Jim Jordan is not a serious candidate for the job. So, too, with the choice for President of the United States. A vote for Trump may satisfy the emotional need of some voters for revenge and retribution, but it is not a vote for stability and peace. The world is a complicated and dangerous place. Last Friday evening, the entire outlook for peace in the Middle East changed dramatically in a matter of minutes. We need Joe Biden’s experience and wisdom to guide us through this difficult time.

Talk to you tomorrow.

#war in Israel #Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #war #political #US House of Representatives #Israel #Middle East #Jewish

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vague-humanoid · 6 months

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Among the proposed measures are several that are quite absurd, including, for example, cutting public funding to cultural institutions that question Israel’s right to exist or that collaborate with institutions or individuals that reject Israel’s right to exist – which would effectively mean any institutions in countries of the Muslim world that don’t recognize Israel. It would mean that Germany can continue to buy gas from Qatar or sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, but that cultural exchange would be prohibited.

The resolution calls upon states to enforce various sanctions, from deportations to denying the right to family reunification, reducing social benefits and denying work permits to residents of Germany who ‘support terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Samidoun, or incite hatred against Jews’.

The issue is: how is ‘support’ defined? From what we have seen the past few weeks, concern for the fate of Palestinian civilians is broadly defined as support for Hamas.

Most tellingly, the bill entails only a single passing mention of the threat posed by right-wing extremist groups and political parties to Jewish life, despite the fact that 84 per cent of antisemitic crimes in Germany come from the far-right, and that a deadly attack on a synagogue in Halle in 2019 was committed by a neo-Nazi. This is a cynical omission considering that the occasion for the bill – the 9th of November – commemorates pogroms committed by the Nazis.

It’s as if non-Jewish Germans themselves are traumatized. Through a sort of twisted inheritance of their own history as persecutors, they can participate in contemporary Jewish suffering. That is how I have read the prevailing response.

@moonisneveralone

#German news

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 5 months

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By: Abigail Shrier

Published: Dec 2023

According to a popular meme, “Queers for Palestine” is like “Chickens for KFC”: To sign on to that slogan, you’d have to be suicidal or an idiot. That, at any rate, seems to be the prevailing view in the circles I travel in when it comes to the transgender activists who support Hamas. The climate activists, the feminist extremists, Gays 4 Gaza, and sad-sack members of Jewish Voice for Peace—each of them strikes us as dupes of a regime that would happily jail, repress, or massacre them. Can they really be this self-defeating? Can they really be this gullible and dumb? Well, at the poker table of today’s leftism, if you don’t know who the fool is, more than likely, the fool is you.

Consider Black Lives Matter Chicago, which announced its support for Hamas in the days after the massacre with a gleeful post on X (né Twitter), featuring a Palestinian flag and a silhouette of a paraglider, presumably on his way to rape women and butcher children, as Palestinian paragliders had just done. “I stand with Palestine,” the poster read. Does BLM, an organization whose aim is to “bring justice, healing and freedom to Black people across the globe,” not know how Ethiopian Jews would be treated if they dared visit Gaza?

Similarly, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, called Israel a “white supremacist Zionist project.” Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows this to be absurd on its face. The 100,000-plus Ethiopian Jews are far from “white,” and a majority of Israel’s population—the Mizrahim, or Easterners, who have been living in and around the Middle East since antiquity—could not be and should not be considered any “whiter” than their Palestinian neighbors.

The foolishness extends beyond race. Climate activists like Greta Thunberg took to Twitter to pledge support for Gaza in the days after the massacre—almost as if they didn’t know that the unprovoked war launched by Hamas on October 7 and the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel will result in both increased carbon emissions and devastation to the local environment.

Meanwhile, gender-studies departments in the United States have sought to “amplify” the call from Palestinian feminists “to join the struggle for Palestinian liberation.” So, in a struggle between an Islamist police state—quite literally, a patriarchy—whose terrorists were encouraged to rape Israeli women on October 7 and a society where women enjoy full rights and serve in the military, Western academic feminists choose the former. And at Columbia University, the queer nonbinary women student group, LionLez, held a movie night: “It’s FREE PALESTINE over here. Zionists aren’t invited.”

Why are the BLM supporters, climate extremists, academic feminists, and trans activists so quick to side with Hamas? Why are those who champion women’s reproductive rights so quick to align themselves with a Hamas-controlled Gaza where women lack the right to drive, let alone get an abortion? Why would they rally to a society where men are encouraged to hit the stray uppity wife? For that matter, why would so many LGBTQ+ groups side against a society that hosts some of the largest Pride festivals worldwide so that they can throw in with another that puts homosexuals to death?

Conservative thinkers James Lindsay and Christopher Rufo have painstakingly traced the Marxist roots of all of these groups, showing that they all branch from the same rotten revolutionary trunk. These groups aim to overthrow the West, and so they support one another. Nests of critical theory fill their interchangeably empty heads.

But I want to suggest a motivation less highbrow and more straightforward. They are all fed by the same polluted water source: hatred, envy, and resentment.

What leads them to show up at the pro-Hamas rallies in remarkable numbers is not ideological commitment. Sure, some may want Marxist revolution, if they even understand what that is. But whatever beliefs they may hold about gender, race, or climate quickly unravel under the clumsy weight of the obvious contradiction of supporting a regime so hostile to these causes.

Which means they are no more motivated by ideology, in other words, than Adolf Hitler was when he allied himself with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Arab mufti of Jerusalem, or the Japanese—another race allegedly inferior to whites in his despicable hierarchy—and made war upon the white French and British. Hitler believed Nazi racial theory, of course. But sometimes hatred simply burns brighter and hotter than all other ideological commitments combined.

So don’t bother informing Gays 4 Gaza that same-sex attraction is proscribed by criminal law in Gaza, backed by a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, in that very territory they’re so wild about. No need to educate them about the finding by Pew Research that the Palestinian population’s opposition to homosexuality is among the highest in the world; that in 2016, Hamas responded to a senior commander’s homosexual activity with a firing squad; or that gay adoption and gay marriage are strictly forbidden in Palestinian territories.

They already know—and they really, truly don’t care.

You could plead with Greta Thunberg and her dead-eyed friends that Israel leads the world in desalination efforts and technology. You could suggest to any of the climate activists marching for Hamas that if they cared about conservation, they might want to side with the state leading the world in renewable-energy technologies. You could remind them that Israel turned over ecologically advanced greenhouses to Gaza worth $14 million as part of the 2005 disengagement—only to see those greenhouses promptly destroyed by the Gazans. If these activists can’t be moved to care for the women who were raped, the babies and elderly butchered, then perhaps Israel’s remarkable efforts to produce electricity from the ocean and seawalls ought to earn it a shout-out from the climate-change warriors? Nah.

They aren’t stupid, and they aren’t suicidal.

Here’s what they are.

They are LGBTQ+ activists who aren’t primarily motivated by gay rights. They are climate radicals who aren’t principally motivated by concern about the climate. And if there were ever a BLM member sincerely concerned about racial justice, no doubt he has long since left the organization behind. Its remaining rank-and-file are no more committed to their putative causes than Hamas is to improving the lives of ordinary Palestinians.

The postmodern left celebrated Lia Thomas, the mediocre male athlete who swapped genders his senior year in college and won NCAA female swimmer of the year, not because it wants to improve the lives of gay and transgender Americans. Had that been the goal, the left would have accepted a fair and sustainable solution, such as an open category for all gender identities alongside a female-only team, and safe transgender changing rooms.

No, they want to take over women’s teams and women’s restrooms, for the same reason a vandal loves a clean white wall. They enjoy making women afraid. They enjoy deleting girls’ names from the record books. They thrill at seeing average Americans squirm.

When a DEI staffer named Nahliah Webber informs parents and children, “There is a killer cop sitting in every school where white children learn,” that isn’t a statement of values. You don’t glue yourself to the Mona Lisa, as eco-warriors have done, or vandalize the Wellington Arch in central London because you love the earth that much. You do it because you despise the civilization that cradles such treasures, because your desire to inflict pain on those you resent deeply overshadows any aim you may espouse on behalf of Mother Earth.

Same with the tearing down of a poster with an image of a child held in captivity, then laughing at a woman who tries to stop you, crying out for mercy. In videos, those who vandalize the posters rarely even react. Their indifference is chilling. At Boston University, confronted by a man holding a camera phone who tells her she should be ashamed of herself for taking down the posters and allying with movement that spreads anti-Semitism, a woman named Anna Epstein stares him coolly in the face. “Dude, you literally know I’m Jewish,” she says.

The great 20th-century economic journalist Henry Hazlitt once noted that Marxism itself ultimately reduces to highly concentrated envy: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.” Universities may add intellectual arabesque to the expression of this hate. But in the end, when these groups bang their bongo drums, their chants reduce to a single creed: Hate those who have something you don’t.

That is what unites this motley crew of mutually exclusive values. When they cry for genocide of the Jews across America’s campuses—“Intifada Revolution,” or “Glory to Our Martyrs,” as one George Washington University student group did—they simply want to inflict fear and instill chaos in a peaceable civilization they despise.

They are not the dupes of a hideous regime in opposition to their values—racial justice, reproductive rights, women’s liberation, climate awareness. We are the dupes for believing they sincerely held those values in the first place.

#Abigail Shrier #gays for palestine #chickens for kfc #islam #gays for islam #islam for gays #pro hamas supporters #hamas #islamic terrorism #religion #religion is a mental illness

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girlactionfigure · 11 months

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Some of the comments about Israel’s operation in Jenin are based on willful attempts to manipulate or ignore facts. Here are a few examples.

1. Misleading about who was killed. One can say “terrorists” or “militants” but willfully misleading is to pretends it’s random people.

2. Persistent use of “refugee camp” is an attempt to mislead. It was a camp established in 1953, it’s a built up urban area today. Willfully misleading is to portray the word “refugee camp” as of the attack is on refugees, as oppose to gunmen in the area.

3. Not mentioning the gunmen, gun violence and far-right religious extremist militia terror groups that are the target of the operation. The armed men openly pose for photos…not showing them is part of misleading about the gun violence these men did to the locals

4. Portraying the use of “missiles” as somehow unacceptable. When hundreds of armed violence extremists take over an area and use it to stockpile illegal rifles, bombs, explosives and other dangerous weapons, they have created a war zone. Precision warfare is how war works today

5. Israel’s use of bulldozers is not against civilians but it is falsely portrayed as such. The fact is that hundreds of gunmen with illegal rifles terrorized civilians and put explosives near streets risking lives. Armored vehicles clearing streets of IEDs is way to remove them

In conclusion, it’s important to start with the reality that armed gangs of men running around with rifles and stockpiling weapons for attacks is what led to this. You can’t have a city terrorized by armed extremists that attack others.

The reality is that the Palestinian Authority backed for years with western aid, and even it’s security forces trained with US backing, had a duty to bring peace and security to people in Jenin and they systematically abandoned the city to extremists (many tied to Iran)

You can go back and read all my and other reports about how illegal weapons openly fueled and destroyed peace and security in Jenin. Stakeholders who were supposed to help the PA, failed to account for this and abandoned the city to armed gun culture extremism.

When is the last time human rights groups or diplomats visited Jenin and spoke out about the flood of illegal firearms and extremists who parade around with guns in front of kids to terrorize people? People have a right not to live under armed gangs

Huge resources were spent on the PA; money siphoned off for villas and BMWs while Jenin was abandoned. While officials relaxed by their pools rifles were stolen and flooded Jenin. Diplomats relaxed in hotels in Ramallah roasting eachother and “human rights” groups as it happened

And so then after the armed groups carried out dozens of attacks Israel increasingly responded. And then those relaxing who had done nothing and abandoned the city to extremists are surprised and misleading.

Jenin is used by gunmen extremists, some backed by Iran, so that Iran can try to turn it into the same hell of Hezbollah-occupied southern Lebanon and Hamas-occupied Gaza and the captogan trade of militias in Syria or the hell of PMU-occupied parts of Iraq.

It’s not like the model isn’t obvious. Iran already carved out an arc of poverty and militia - occupied armed gunmen hell in many areas to profit and use these areas against others. Unfortunately they tried to do the same in Jenin with predicable results.

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

#Israel #Jenin #🧵#Home&Garden #Beit Vagan

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batsarebetterthanpeople · 4 months

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I think some people on this website are misinterpreting the combined fact that Hamas isn't just a terrorist group its an organized political party with like... Policies... that does have a military wing rather than a loose group of people doing bombings to prove a point so calling them a terrorist org is somewhat reductive, the fact that Hamas is more or less the only group in Gaza who has enough man and fire power to even sort of make the IDF sweat a little (even if they're still hopelessly out matched), and the fact that people in times of war tend to look favorably upon people they perceive to be protecting them no matter who they are, and have concluded from those three facts that Hamas is somehow not a far right religious extremist organization. Which certainly does not follow.

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eretzyisrael · 5 months

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by Gilead Ini

The paper’s apologia for those who marched on the library is consistent with how it has treated other anti-Israel extremists since Oct. 7. The Times recently came to the defense of those tearing down posters of men, women, and children abducted by Hamas, casting the heartless act by profanity-spewing vandals as a “release valve” for the “anguished.” Another recent piece was dedicated to whitewashing the slogan calling for a Palestine “from the river to the sea” saying it is not necessarily a call for a Palestine from the river to the sea. (That geography requires the elimination of Israel.) One piece goes so far as to listing ways to wear kaffiyehs, or Middle Eastern head scarfs, included “wrapped around the face” — in the manner of Palestinian terrorists or the pro-violence, anti-Israeli protesters who mimic them — as just another run-of-the-mill way of fashioning the scarf. (It is traditionally worn over the head, not as a disguise.)

In its Cooper Union reprise, the New York Times craftily slants the report to bolster its preferred narrative. The piece wastes little time before downplaying the incident as follows:

The pro-Palestinian protesters had dispersed just a few minutes later and no one was injured or arrested, but the story seemed to grow more dire the further it traveled. Posts that went viral falsely claimed that the library had been barricaded to protect the students inside from an angry mob, and that the police were afraid to get involved.

It is true that there were no objects were used to “barricade” the library doors. Instead, as the piece acknowledges fifteen paragraphs later, “a security guard shut [the library’s] large gray doors and stood outside them.” The effect was the same, leading protesters to later say they were “angry about being kept out,” as the newspaper admits. And if the college, which acknowledges that the library was closed for 20 minutes, isn’t willing to say it was closed to protect the students inside, there is nonetheless video footage in circulation in which someone can be heard telling a student, “I wouldn’t recommend leaving right now.” (He replies, “I wasn’t planning on it.”) One of the Jewish students told CBS, “The librarians ran over to us and they were like, ‘We tried to warn you, but we just got notice that they’re coming down.'”

So if viral posts indicated that the library was barricaded to protect students, these claims were incorrect only on the margins.

After suggesting concerns about the Jews in the library were excessive, the newspaper then shifts attention from them, with the first quotation in the article serving to reframe the story to cast those banging on the library glass as imperiled:

“Off-campus groups are very motivated to weaponize these protests,” said Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. But the stakes of campus activism are now perilous. “What, 20 or 30 years ago, could have been an incident that nobody would find out about unless they were actually there has now become one that can be circulated globally and be a life-changing experience.”

Readers are left to believe Johnston is a dispassionate scholar of activism, though he is far from a neutral observer on this topic. On Oct. 7, as Hamas was mowing down Israeli civilians in their homes an at a music festival, Johnston took to social media to express indignation. Not about Hamas’s rampage. About those distressed by it. “Lots of folks expressing moral outrage about Palestinian tactics today who I’ve never seen expressing similar outrage about Israeli tactics, ever,” he wrote on X.

#new york times #media bias #angus johnston #cooper union #sharon otterman #barricade

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tomorrowusa · 6 months

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What's gone underreported since the October 7th terrorist attack which started the Israel-Hamas war is that extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have increasingly been attacking Palestinian residents there.

The US is now taking action against violent settlers.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in a Sunday interview he was “pleased” to see President Biden announce he would take measures to more forcefully combat settler violence in the West Bank, specifically noting his suggestion for a restriction on travel visas. “I was pleased to hear the president say what he said, and I fully support the president’s plan to restrict visas from people who have a record of violence against innocent people,” Van Hollen said in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “I think that’s an important first step,” he added. Van Hollen’s remarks come as many Democrats have increased calls for the White House to focus more on the loss of life among innocent Palestinians as the war continues in the region.

This settler violence is not new. But settlers are taking advantage of the distraction in Gaza to ramp up their savagery.

“Extreme settler violence against Palestinians has been an issue for a very long time. We’ve seen a huge spike in extremist settler violence since the Gaza war started, as people have been focused on the war there,” Van Hollen said.

As of Thursday, over 120 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in settler-instigated violence since October 7th.

The West Bank Israeli settlers have been the biggest impediment to Israel-Palestine peace for decades. They are mostly religious fanatics and ethno-nationalists who believe Israel should have the same boundaries it had 3,000 years ago. Though there is also a segment of opportunistic settlers who are there because far-right Israeli governments had promised them cheap housing and land in the occupied territories.

The far right in Israel as exemplified by Bibi Netanyahu and the Hamas Islamic extremists had been strange allies – until October 7th. Both oppose a two-state solution and implicitly favor their own versions of the "from the river to the sea" implied genocide.

I hope the decades-late sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers by the US will send a clear signal that encroachments on Palestinian land will not be tolerated.

As for those who claim that Israel has a Biblical right to the West Bank and Gaza: Get a life! There's nothing like religious fanaticism to inflame a conflict. Hamas is not the only group of fanatics motivated by religious radicalism in the region.

The US has recognized the right of Israel to exist since its inception. I support that. But using the Bible as a blueprint for 21st century geopolitics is no more legit than using it as a science textbook.

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mariacallous · 6 months

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TEL AVIV (JTA) — When he spoke with a news anchor on Thursday night, Israeli reservist Aviad Frija was hailed by right-wing politicians and commentators as a hero for his role in responding to a terror attack at a Jerusalem bus stop earlier that day.

By Monday, Frija was arrested by the IDF and under investigation. The man he had shot was not a suspected terrorist but an Israeli civilian who had himself played a role in halting the attack.

According to video from the scene, Frija had shot the man, a 38-year-old lawyer named Yuval Doron Castleman, after Castleman had gotten on his knees, dropped his gun and put his hands in the air to show that he was not a threat. Castleman, a former police officer turned lawyer, was initially left bleeding on the ground and later died of his wounds, a day shy of his 38th birthday.

Castleman “did everything he needed to do so they could identify him. He went down on his knees, opened his jacket to show he didn’t have any explosives on him, yelled at them, ‘Don’t shoot, I’m Jewish, I’m Israeli,’ and they continued to shoot him,” his father, Moshe Castleman, said on Israeli Army Radio.

Castleman’s death has drawn scrutiny to the ways in which Israel’s right-wing government has encouraged everyday Israelis to own guns and fight terror themselves — a gambit to boost security that, critics say, has instead led to the spilling of more Israeli blood. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who already faces widespread public disapproval over his handling of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel — has come in for more criticism in recent days over what some say was a flippant response to Castleman’s death.

“This has allowed a jungle in terms of everything related to distributing weapons, using weapons,” Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, said on Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. “This is a terrible thing that will have far-reaching consequences… an atmosphere where everyone will take a weapon, and use it.”

Castleman’s family is also castigating officials for their response. His father and sister Shaked have called his death an “execution,” while his sister Noga said the family did not hear from the police until several hours after the incident and did not get the chance to comfort Castleman in his final hours of life.

“We carried on with our lives as he was fighting for his life,” Noga said, according to Kan. “We weren’t there to caress him, to call to him. I wouldn’t wish upon anyone that they hear what happened to a loved one in such an unclear way.”

After his death, said Shaked, “instead of mourning, we find ourselves in a war for justice.”

For more than a year, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, has encouraged private citizens to own guns and has made Israel’s historically strict gun-control requirements more lenient. He has also pushed to loosen open-fire regulations for police officers, whom he oversees. Earlier this year, he praised an Israeli settler who killed a Palestinian in an altercation. (Frija is a member of the Hilltop Youth, a group of young extremist settlers, as well as a reservist in the IDF.)

Since Oct. 7, Ben-Gvir said in a recent government hearing, more than 260,000 people have applied for gun licenses. “When the war started, we knew that we were right when we said that every place that has a weapon can save a life,” he said at a recent meeting of his party, Otzma Yehudit or Jewish Power.

But Ben-Gvir’s policies have faced backlash. In recent weeks, Israeli media reported that U.S. officials were threatening to stop supplying guns to Israel if they continued to wind up in the hands of civilians. (The Department of State declined to comment, with an official telling JTA the department does not comment as a matter of policy on “the status of licensed direct commercial defense sales activities.”) On Monday, the head of Israel’s Firearm Licensing Department resigned in protest of the loosened gun ownership requirements.

And critics of Netanyahu’s government have drawn a link between Ben-Gvir’s policies and Frija’s shooting of Castleman, even though Frija was in uniform at the time.

Moshe Yaalon, a former Netanyahu ally and defense minister, posted online that Ben Gvir’s “populist calls” to loosen open-fire regulations “contributed to the tragic result.” Yaalon and others also linked the shooting to a 2016 incident in which IDF soldier Elor Azaria shot dead a disarmed Palestinian terrorist who was lying on the ground. Azaria was tried and convicted but also became a hero to some on the right.

Netayahu’s critics have also chided him for his initial response to the incident, in which he defended Ben-Gvir’s policy though he acknowledged that it posed potential dangers.

“We know that in the waves of terror in the last decade and earlier, the presence of armed civilians often saves the situation and has prevented a huge disaster,” he said. “I think that in the present situation we need to continue this policy. I fully support that. It may be that we will pay a price for this, and that’s life.”

The “that’s life” comment particularly irked critics, and on Sunday, Netanyahu offered a more sympathetic message in a video shared to his social media in which he said he had spoken to Castleman’s father.

“Yuval Doron Castleman is a hero of Israel. In a supreme act of bravery, Yuval saved many lives,” Netanyahu said. “However, unfortunately, a terrible tragedy occurred there – and the man who had saved others was killed. There must be a thorough inquiry.”

In the days following the incident, the IDF has released several statements indicating that its rules of engagement forbid firing upon suspects with their hands raised, and announced on Monday that Frija is being detained and questioned in what is called a “preliminary arrest.” Since his initial interview, Frija has subsequently claimed that he was acting out of fear for his own life.

Critics of the shooting on the left do not see it as an isolated incident, but as the result of a culture that has been nurtured for years on the Israeli right. Avner Gvaryahu, director of the Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation group focused on the experiences of combat veterans, described a “years-long campaign led by the right-wing politicians, organizations, spokespeople, and journalists to ‘not tie the hands of our soldiers’” when they face a threat — though he noted that it was impossible to know what Frija was thinking in the moment.

Gvaryahu, whose organization leads tours in the West Bank, said he sees that culture taking hold there as well. He said, from what he’s witnessed, rules of engagement for soldiers are “becoming more flexible, basically, making it easier to shoot.”

In the face of the criticism, Ben Gvir and others on the right have portrayed the incident as a horrible accident. In an online post, right-wing journalist Yotam Zimri called the shooting a “terrible tragedy” and implied that it was wrong to place blame on Frija.

“There are no bad guys in this story except for the two Arab murderers,” he said, referring to the two Hamas-affiliated terrorists who perpetrated Thursday’s attack. “If you’re looking for other bad guys, there’s something wrong with you.”

But during a visit with Castleman’s family on Monday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog acknowledged that the state bore some responsibility for his death.

“I have come here not as a private citizen but as the president of the state of Israel, to ask forgiveness and express great appreciation for a hero of Israel who did something great and courageous,” Herzog said, adding that Castleman “paid with his life in what I see as the worst and most outrageous way possible.”

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