I will first
state that I am liberal, not conservative. However, I am a liberal who
appreciates the Jews and the state of Israel. I strongly believe in the
institution of democracy. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. I
have noticed several of my more politically Progressive social media friends
and acquaintances posting more clips and memes, though not many articles,
criticizing Israel. Some are anti-Zionist, some are about AIPAC’s influence on
politics, and some seem to want to suggest that Jews oppose Israeli policies
when, in fact, only a small minority do.
This is a long post, but I
wanted to look at the issue from many different and predominantly pro-Jewish
perspectives, of which there should be more, in order to counteract the
ubiquitous anti-Zionist sentiments and Palestinian propaganda.
Anti-Zionist DSA Candidate Wins in Colorado While Jews
Endure More Antisemitism
I saw the recent interview of
Democratic primary winner and likely election winner in a strongly left-leaning
district in Colorado, Melat Kiros, with Margaret Hoover on Firing Line. It was
a good interview, and Hoover conducted it well as she always does. Kiros
assured that she was not antisemitic, and I believe her, yet she holds views
with which I strongly disagree. She tried to emphasize democratic socialism as
mostly about workers’ rights. Jews in her district are on edge due to her past
statements such as saying October 7 was “inevitable," refusing to label
a local firebombing as antisemitic, and accusing Israel of genocide and
apartheid.” She may not be personally antisemitic, but there is reason to
believe she may not call out antisemitism when it occurs.
According to a Fox News
report:
“Rabbi Menachem Lehrfield, director of the Jewish
Outreach Initiative in Denver, wrote on social media that he felt fearful
knowing that many of his neighbors seemed to support the kind of anti-Israel
rhetoric Kiros campaigned on.”
"I was walking down the street right here, right
outside this building, and somebody rolled down their window and yelled, ‘dirty
Jew,’ to me," Lehrfield told Fox News Digital during an interview at his
Denver office. "I don't know what's going to happen next time. I don't
know if next time, instead of hurling vile words, they'll be hurling an
explosive like the person who killed Karen Diamond in Boulder. I don't know if
they're going to do something to me or my family or my community. There's a
real fear that we're living with."
“When asked about the attack during a 9News interview,
Kiros condemned the violence but refused to call it antisemitic, saying she
didn’t "know what was in the heart of the perpetrator."
That stance shocked and
frustrated local Jews. She said this despite the 45-year-old illegal immigrant
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who committed the murder and hate crime, yelled
"Free Palestine" and spent a year planning the attack to "kill
all Zionist people." Later, she acknowledged that it was an antisemitic
attack but blamed Israel for the rise in antisemitism in the U.S.
Regarding criticism of Israel
vs. antisemitism, Rabbi Lehrfield noted:
“…there's a big distinction between criticizing Israel
and demonizing it and saying it doesn't have a right to exist."
This is, of course, true.
West Bank Settler Violence is Abhorrent
I think Israel’s management
of West Bank settler violence has been very poor and that the settlers have
generally been unfair to the Palestinians there. Some Israeli settlers have
exhibited open and unapologetic racism. They should be held accountable, and
Israel has been lax in doing so, although recent cases suggest they may be
moving toward cracking down on settler violence, and they certainly should.
Even U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee recently condemned settler
violence as terrorism. However, there are also some radical elements, including
Hamas operatives, in the West Bank. This is concerning since the charter and
mandate of Hamas is to kill Jews, to basically commit genocide. In any case,
there is no doubt that there are violent extremists among Israel’s settler
population and that they should be dealt with strongly by Israeli authorities
and punished for crimes they commit. Certainly, much more needs to be done. An
article in the Jerusalem Post notes:
“Palestinian terrorists have still killed many more Jews
in the West Bank than Jewish terrorists have killed Palestinian civilians, and
the Palestinian plots that are thwarted tend to be much more lethal, but the
gap between the sides used to be much larger.”
Calling Israel Genocidal is Gaslighting
It seems like a bit of
gaslighting to me that collateral damage from addressing truly
genocidal-oriented military groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be
considered to be genocide, especially as those military groups have gone to
great lengths to use their civilian citizens as human shields. Certainly, one
can say that the IDF has been much less precise in its necessary urban warfare
than it could have been and that they have failed to protect civilians; it has
effectively failed to protect those Palestinians, some purposefully and some
inadvertently, protecting their enemy. Fewer civilians should have been killed,
and opposing IDF actions on this basis is reasonable. Is it ethnic cleansing?
It certainly could be close to it. However, calling it genocide is not
reasonable. The IDF obviously does not seek to exterminate the Palestinian
people but to stop the terrorists controlling them and being deployed among
them. Thus, when Anti-Zionists, including those at the UN and many NGOs, and
socialists casually throw around the term genocide, they are not being
accurate. It is the same with using the term apartheid. There are similarities
to apartheid but Israel’s blockade of Gaza is basically a blockade of a region
that has a military actively deployed against them, has declared war on them,
has shot tens of thousands of weapons at it, and, of course, has invaded it,
slaughtering thousands, raping, burning civilian people in their homes, taking
hostages, many of whom were tortured and killed. Before that, it was the IEDs
and the suicide bombers that also explicitly targeted civilians. Thus, it would
be basically slander to call responses to this genocide or apartheid. The Jews
certainly experienced one of the most horrific genocides in human history just
decades ago. To equate what they are doing in Gaza with what Hitler did in
Germany with mass torture and mass murder is a level of gaslighting far beyond
the pale. The blockade is also meant to stop weapons flows to the groups that
are actually committed to genocide. Many of those weapons flows have come in
through aid trucks. Hamas steals the aid for itself and resells it to citizens.
Western countries like the U.S. and EU, Gulf countries, the UN, and NGOs poured
money and resources into Gaza, resources that were partially used to build an
extensive network of tunnels, weapons manufacturing facilities, and missile launch
sites protected by hospitals and schools. Meanwhile, the UN was paying the
salaries of many, likely hundreds, of Hamas operatives, essentially genocide
seekers. It needs to be reiterated that Hamas, widely regarded as a brutal
terrorist group like the Islamic State, still retains power as the government
of Gaza, even as an elected one, though that was almost two decades ago. Now,
it operates like a Mafia, threatens, tortures, and murders its citizens. Simple
accusations of collaborating with Israel, whether true or not, can be grounds
for execution.
There is a member of the
Israeli diaspora, a longtime anti-Israel writer, an architect, and an
investigator, Eyal Wiezman, who says building the tunnels and the military
infrastructure was necessary and legitimate self-defense. Bullshit! This guy
has been leading a group that is doing an investigation for the International
Criminal Court’s genocide case against Israel. His new book is called
‘Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide.’ More and more, the ICC is being
seen to lack legitimacy, and this effort further reinforces that. An act closer
to genocide, though not by definition, is when Iran recently killed 30,000 to
possibly over 50,000 unarmed civilians, most of them over a couple of days. In that
case, it is mass murder of its own civilian population, which is unusual but
not unprecedented. It happened with the Soviets, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, and there
are many other examples. Those cases are not considered genocide since they did
not seek to exterminate a separate people, but they can be just as bad or much
worse.
Anti-Zionism is Closer to Antisemitism Than Most People
Believe
One of the biggest issues
seems to be whether the State of Israel and the Jewish community are the same
thing. I hear those on the left say all the time: “I’m an anti-Zionist, not an
antisemite.” Jon Stewart said in a recent debate with Senator John Fetterman:
“The Jewish community and Israel are not the same thing,
brother-man. That is not the same thing.”
While there are some Jews who
say they are against Zionism, by some accounts, 90% of Jewish people identify
as Zionists, the belief that Israel deserves to have a state, a Jewish state.
It is in a region amid multiple Islamic states, so having a “Jewish” state is
par for the region. So, I would reply to Jon Stewart that they are about 90%
the same thing, and saying you are anti-Zionist is like saying you are only 90%
antisemitic. Of course, it’s not quite like that, since you can disagree with
policies without hating the people, even though the vast majority support them.
Many people, including many
Jews, see anti-Zionism as a lesser form of antisemitism, but still as
antisemitism.
“The label means that “Jewish people don’t have the
right to live in their homeland,” Josh Sayles, vice president of external
affairs at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, told the Editorial Board.
He also noted that many young
people may see anti-Zionism as a way to support Palestinian rights. Haim
Shaked, director of the University of Miami’s Sue and Leonard Miller Center for
Contemporary Judaic Studies, said “if anti-Zionists are going to question
Israel’s existence in the name of human rights, they should also question the
existence of other countries, like Iran or China, based on human rights
violations.”
Demographics are perhaps
important as well. About 46% of Jews around the world live in Israel. Second to
Israel is the United States, where 37.5% of the world’s Jews live. In
comparison, there are about 15-16 million Jews in the world and about 2 billion
Muslims. Thus, there are about 129 times more Muslims in the world than Jews.
Muslims make up nearly 25% of the world’s population while Jews make up just
0.2%. Since the U.S. hosts the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel,
the interests of those Jews should be considered.
One might ask why
Progressives hate Israel so much and often align themselves with Islamists, as
Peter Laffin recently considered in a Washington Examiner article:
“Progressives and radicalized Islamists agree on almost
nothing — not the status of women, not the treatment of homosexuals, not the
place of religion in public life. They share one overriding aim: dismantling
the civilization that supposedly oppresses them. And that alone is enough to
bind them.”
Andrew Solender of Axios
wrote in May that:
“Antisemitism is so resurgent in U.S. politics that some
of the worst hate speech you've ever heard has become a part of day-to-day life
for Jewish politicians.”
“The big picture: Gone are the days of veiled
insinuations and dog whistles. The hate is direct, explicit and shockingly
casual, two dozen members of Congress and candidates told Axios.”
“Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) said he is seeing "a
level of naked antisemitism, naked Jew hatred ... that isn't thinly veiled
anymore, it's just direct."
"The DMs are the worst," said Wiener.
"Just horrific antisemitism, very violent. ... We're in an anything-goes
situation."
"It's now in the mainstream," said Moskowitz.
It does seem odd that the
worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust would lead to a massive surge in
hatred of Jews, after Israel’s response. Immediately in Progressive politics,
the Jews were blamed for being massacred! The Hebrew story of the scapegoat, a
ritual goat sent off into the wilderness to carry away the sins of the people,
is perhaps relevant. A scapegoat has come to refer to an entity that gets
blamed, often when not guilty, and the Jews are often blamed for things they do
not have anything to do with. I was shocked when I heard about Progressives
saying the Jews deserved the October 7 massacre, when I heard that some
academics were hailing Hamas’s actions, and when I heard that many Jewish
students were being threatened on college campuses.
David Harris, a well-known
Jewish voice, is the author of the recent book Antisemitism: What
Everyone Needs to Know. According to an article in Creators, Harris invokes
Soviet Jewish dissident Natan Sharansky, who remained in a Gulag rather than
renounce his faith:
"The 3Ds — demonization, delegitimization and
double standards," Sharansky wrote, "are the three main tools that
anti-Semites employed against Jews throughout history." Presently, one of
the principal tools is to label Israel, the victim of a genocidal invasion,
guilty of genocide because its attempt to prevent the promised next attacks and
to free the innocents taken and kept hostage killed a great many Gazans. These
were deaths Hamas did everything it could to guarantee.”
“Then there's the demonization and the double standards
deployed against AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which
lobbies for the alliance between the two countries. It doesn't even rank among
the top 100 lobbies in Washington. Still, it has become the most fashionable of
bogeymen, the latest in a history of Jewish bogeymen supposedly responsible for
some Jewish conspiracy or another. Never mind that those contributing to AIPAC
are American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. And never mind
that Qatar, for example, a Muslim Brotherhood-linked emirate, plows billions of
dollars of foreign cash into America to purchase influence. Those singling out
AIPAC couldn't care less. AIPAC is "dark money." Qatari cash is
perfectly OK money.”
“Anti-Semitism is often described as "the oldest
hatred." It is certainly the most resilient. And these days, it is
extraordinarily potent and widespread. Which makes this a very difficult season
indeed.”
NGO Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism
NGO Oxfam recently put out a
report officially charging Israel with genocide and demanding things like
reparations for Palestinians. They also demand fiscal revenues be returned to
the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank even as the PA fails to stop its
pay-for-slay policy.
I was sad to see a report noting
that the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has been strongly infected by an
anti-Zionist/anti-Israel bias. According to NGO Monitor:
“…it is “clear that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias
are widespread in MSF’s organizational culture and are expressed by both top
officials and lower-level staff.”
This began way back in the
early 1980s, apparently.
“Antisemitism within MSF began under the cover of
anti-Zionism. It [the ideological shift] cannot be fixed. How can you fix
antisemitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?” Rossin {former MSF
Secretary General} said.
Several UN agencies have also been called antisemitic and anti-Zionist.
Anti-Zionism is a Worldview, Not a Policy Position
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour
argues in an article in The Abrahamic Metacritique that anti-Zionism is not a
policy position as often depicted, but rather, a worldview. He also says that
the liberal establishment is incorrectly framing anti-Zionism as a moral movement.
He says that instead, there is:
“…an inter-elite ruthless competition for institutional
position, and anti-Zionism is the instrument through which that war of position
is being waged.”
As someone who votes
Democrat, I resent that anti-Zionism is becoming established within the party.
I will not vote for a Democratic Socialist or for someone who is anti-Zionist.
Mansour also traces
marginalizing Jews and the socialist/anti-Jewish nexus as having a historical
precedent in Europe:
“The socialist movements of the 1920s and 1930s in
Germany, in Austria, and in France faced a version of the same dilemma that the
Democratic establishment faces today. A radical nationalist flank was pressing
from within and without, and among the demands of that flank was a demand that
the party distance itself from the Jews, who were understood as a complicating
element whose presence in the coalition invited attacks that the party could
not afford. (There were, of course, some exceptions.)”
He does say that those early
socialists were not really antisemitic, just that they regarded the Jews as a
distraction to be avoided. He also brings up the British Labour Party’s history
of antisemitism, which he says began in the 1970s and reached a peak during
Corbyn’s reign as party leader. This happened when more Muslim migrants were
entering Britain and when the idea of anti-colonialism began
proliferating.
Palestinianism and the UK’s Green Party
A recent article in the
Telegraph refers to Palestinianism as being obsessed with Palestinian rights.
The recent election of a Green Party mayor in the British city of Hackney
illustrates this. Hackney is also home to one of the largest Charedi Orthodox Jewish
communities outside New York and Israel. The city is 6.7% Jewish. One of the
mayor’s first acts was to write:
“…to the mayor of Haifa, the Israeli city which has been
twinned with Hackney since 1968 (back when self-identified progressives
supported the Jewish state in its struggle against terror). Garbett’s letter
informed her Israeli counterpart that the twinning would potentially end,
citing the so-called Israeli genocide.”
As a clear act of aggression,
the new mayor set the final decision date for the potential change to October
7, 2026. Wow! They claimed it was an accident. It definitely sends a foreboding
message to the local Jewish population.
Meanwhile, Green Party
activists in the UK are talking about wiping Israel off the map and
"killing Zionists." One Green Party member noted:
“Zionism has to go, it’s ultimately an apartheidal
[sic], ethno-supremacist ideology.”
Many among them are promoting
the idea that Zionism is racism.
The Guy Who Dresses Like Mao and Anti-AIPAC Sentiments
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the
rather openly antisemitic communist influencer who wears the Chairman Mao
jacket, Hasan Piker, claims that being pro-Israel is not a Democratic position
that will be tolerated.
“There is 0% chance that whoever the elected Democrat is
that wins the primary will be pro-Israel in any way, shape or form. You’ll
see,” Piker said.
I certainly hope he is wrong,
and I certainly hope the Democratic nominee will be pro-Israel.
A recent article in the New
York Post by its editorial board notes that the strong anti-AIPAC trend in the
Democratic Party is a textbook anti-Jewish conspiracy theory motif where the
Jews are said to control things from a distance. It has similarities to the
infamous ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ conspiracy perpetrated by the
Russian secret service. The conspiracy was adopted by the Nazis and used as
rationale for murdering Jews. Groups in the Arab and Muslim worlds adopted it
as well. Is it now in the Democratic Party in some form? I would say it has
been for some time in a limited form. My leftist friends occasionally pass on,
or used to pass on, those anti-Soros, Rothschilds in control conspiracy memes.
The article explains the downgrading of AIPAC among the hard left:
“So how did AIPAC become the enemy?”
“The effort began 20 years ago, when critics claimed,
falsely, that AIPAC and the “Israel lobby” had provoked the Iraq War.”
“That message resonated with left-wing Democrats,
already growing increasingly anti-Israel.”
“AIPAC tried to appease Democrats — even apologizing to
Obama when AIPAC members applauded Donald Trump for criticizing him.”
“It didn’t help.”
“Now AIPAC is demonized by Democrats on the left — even
by “progressive” Jews now desperate to survive in their own party.”
“We know where this goes, and it’s nowhere good.”
Free Speech and The Right to Not Have to Work with Jews
Cornell University, one of
the universities accused of antisemitism by the Trump administration and where
one of its professors praised the Hamas October 7 attack as “exhilarating”
during a pro-Palestine rally, was in the news recently. This time it was a
student who turned down a job offer because he did not want to work with Jews.
While the student is entitled to his freedom of speech, such pronouncements are
shocking and unacceptable. Part of the student’s reason for not wanting to work
with Jews is his view that Israel is a genocidal country. Thus, the student
here directly equates his anti-Jew position to his anti-Israel position,
suggesting that anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism.
Post-Colonial Theory
William Nye, in an opinion
piece for the Washington Examiner, notes that post-colonial theory, which is
taught at some universities, is indoctrinating students to see everything in
terms of oppressor and oppressed, colonizer vs. colonized, especially the
Israeli Palestinian issue. He caught one of his college lecturers off guard
when he pushed back against post-colonial theory with an unpopular view:
“It's lazy to blame a country's poverty entirely on
colonization when geography, culture, and governance matter just as much, often
more.”
He notes that post-colonial
theory grew out of the Marxism of the 1960s along with critical race theory.
This mass of ideas is known as post-Marxism. Marx originated and developed the
idea of the oppressor vs. oppressed narrative. In the article, Nye argues that
post-colonial theory is fueling anti-Western sentiments. He mentions Franz
Fanon as a major post-colonial voice in America and that he teaches that
colonial violence should be met with revolutionary violence, very much like the
revolution required in Marxist theory. Nye also notes that post-colonialism is
based on grievance against those seen as oppressors.
State Democratic Party Jews Being Harassed at Party Events
Another shock was when
Michigan’s Jewish State Attorney General, Dana Nessel, skipped the state
Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and
harassment. She noted at a roundtable discussion about antisemitism:
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t
going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get
harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed
off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the
roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s
been happening to me.”
Other Jewish candidates in
the state also complained about harassment at state Democratic Party events.
Recently, a group of rabbis
in Maine has called on the Democratic Party to stop referring to Israel’s
actions as genocide, after many did so in the latest political cycle.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its
political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing
the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call
upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create
a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the
adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for
peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the
Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one
community in the service of another.”
They warned that the term
‘genocide’ is becoming a political slogan among Democrats.
“The use of the term has become a “currency for
acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs,
the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the
statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example
with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common
good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization
and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern
Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark
of true leadership.”
The Democratic Socialists ran
a strongly anti-Zionist candidate, Oliver Larkin, against Jewish Rep Jared
Moskowitz in a Florida district with a large Jewish population. Moskowitz won
with over 63% of the vote. Larkin advocated for an embargo on any arms to
Israel. He argues that anti-Zionism is not antisemitic. Larkin is one of a
number of candidates who had Hasan Piker host fundraisers for him. The Miami
Herald editorial board writes:
“Anti-Zionism is especially hurtful to Jewish voters
“because it evokes a whole world of persecution that goes back thousands of
years,” said Haim Shaked, director of the University of Miami’s Sue and Leonard
Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies. He said if anti-Zionists are
going to question Israel’s existence in the name of human rights, they should
also question the existence of other countries, like Iran or China, based on
human rights violations.”
The Long History of Latin American Demonization of Israel
Israel has also been
intensely demonized by the Latin American left. In an opinion piece for
Haaretz, anthropologist Fabio Zuker noted that anti-Zionism on the left is
taking cues from right-wing antisemitic conspiracies. He notes that when the
U.S. extracted Maduro from Venezuela, his then Vice-President Delcy RodrÃguez
said the operation had Zionist undertones. He writes:
“Just as antisemitism historically operated as a
conspiratorial worldview that attributed global causality to a hidden
collective actor, certain ideological forms of anti-Zionism can adopt a similar
totalizing form.”
“In these discourses, criticism of Israel does not focus
on Israel's bombing of Gaza or the inhumane treatment of Palestinians in the
occupied territories – policies I have also criticized. Instead, the emphasis
shifts toward constructing a demonology in which Israel appears as an unique
source of evil and the key explanatory force.”
He notes wedded
anti-Jewish/anti-Zionist conspiracies in Argentina, most recently implicating
Israelis in starting Patagonian wildfires to seize land. He notes that Latin
America’s history of inequality, foreign interventions, and covert operations
makes it fertile ground for conspiracy theories. In Latin America, several
countries have extreme political polarization where the left is thoroughly
anti-Israel, and the right is pro-Israel. This seems to be the case in
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and several other countries. El Salvador’s
right-wing President Nayib Bukele is of Palestinian descent, but praises
Israel, saying that Hamas does not represent Palestinians.
Supporting Israeli Victims of Murder is Even Demonized
Kudos to Boy George, who was
inspired by visiting Israel and meeting parents and survivors of the horrific
attack on the Nova Music festival, to write a song about his support with the
hopeful title “We Will Dance Again.” Unfortunately, one of my leftist socialist
acquaintances posted a meme condemning the song. Boy George was bullied out of
performances for the song. Nicole Lampert writes about it in an article for The
Telegraph:
“The world insists that we grieve with the Palestinians,
that we understand their anger, their pain – and we should. But it feels like
Israelis and Jewish people are not allowed to feel pain too.”
I would point out that
declaring oneself against Israeli policy is not antisemitic, nor is it
anti-Zionist. Declaring oneself against Israel having the right to exist as a
country is exactly what anti-Zionist means, and that is often very closely
related to antisemitism.
El Sayad’s Primary Victory Polarizing Democrats in the
State as Pro-Israel or Anti-Israel
Regarding the recent primary
win in Michigan of Abdul el Sayad, Washington Examiner’s Zachary Faria wrote:
“El Sayed is a terrorist sympathizer who turned an
attempted Islamic terrorist attack against a Jewish preschool in Michigan into
an opportunity to condemn Israel. El Sayed is an antisemite who is obsessed
with Gaza, focused more on issues in the Middle East than in his own state.”
Those are pretty strong
words, and I do not know if they are true. I have heard people say that El
Sayad is no socialist, but he appeared in campaign events with several DSA
members including Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Hasan Piker. Even Dem operative
James Carville says he would vote for El Sayad over the republican nominee,
Mike Rogers, who he apparently does not care for. Others in Michigan are,
however, planning to vote for Rogers, including centrist Democrats, Jewish
Democrats, and Independents. Thus, I would predict that El Sayad won’t make it
into the Senate. Dearborn, Michigan, is the first U.S. city to have an Arab
American majority and the origin of the 2024 “uncommitted” movement, which
sought to refuse to commit to voting for Kamala Harris for her not being
sufficiently anti-Israel. Pro-Palestinian rallies in Dearborn after October 7
featured plenty of “Death to America!” chants, something more common in
countries affiliated with Islamic terrorism.
Hamas as an Evil Death Cult and Pathological Hostility
Towards Israel
Dan Perry writes in The
Forward:
“What began as fury over Israel’s conduct of the Gaza
war has evolved, in significant parts of the progressive left, into a
pathological hostility toward Israel that has become a driver of political
identity and debate. The genocide accusation is increasingly treated not as a
contested claim but as settled truth; opposition to Zionism as evidence of
virtue; and even Hamas and “armed resistance” can be romanticized or excused.”
He notes that a new book by
Douglas Murray, On Democracies and Death Cults, highlights:
“…the extraordinary difficulty much of the Western left
now seems to have in distinguishing between a deeply flawed democracy and a
murderous Islamist movement committed to its destruction.”
The central theme of the
book, he says, is that Hamas is evil and is a death cult. He writes that Hamas:
“…glorifies death, sanctifies martyrdom and exploits the
deaths of its own people as readily as those of its enemies.”
He says that the book argues
well that Hamas holds a:
“…worldview in which individual human life carries
almost no value beside ideological or tribal imperatives.’
“Murray argues that large parts of the contemporary
Western left have become incapable of recognizing jihadist movements for what
they are because they increasingly interpret every conflict through a single
moral framework: oppressor and oppressed. Once Israelis are cast as oppressors
and Palestinians as oppressed, every other moral consideration recedes.
Terrorism becomes “resistance,” massacres become contextual, and universal
moral standards give way to political tribalism.”
Murray argues that people are
indignant about the 20th century displacements of Arabs but
often are not even aware of the massive displacements of Jews out of
Arab-controlled countries.
The Telegraph’s Stephen
Pollard writes that the genocide moniker is unwarranted whether it comes from
the left or the right. He notes that Howard
Jacobson pointed out that genocide is:
“…the most sadistic {charge} that can be made against
Israel in particular, because it deliberately shifts the Jews from historical
victims of genocide to being perpetrators.”
He says the genocide lie is a
kind of “big lie” of the type that Hitler wrote was easier to believe than
smaller lies. He also explains that charges that Israel was deliberately
starving Gazans are also a lie with no proof, despite UN agencies and many others
leveling it with inadequate data. More recent analysis with nutritional data
shows that Gazans have not been starving. The evidence is also clear that
Israel did not have a starvation policy, as many have suggested. He notes that
most of those killed in Gaza were adult-aged men, and many were Hamas members
or affiliates.
Israel Has No Policy to Starve Gazans
Regarding the claims of
deliberate starvation of Gazans, Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon noted:
"During the war in Gaza, Israel was accused by many
countries and by many U.N. officials that we deliberately starved the
population in Gaza. That was a blood libel," Danon told Fox News Digital.
"When we actually answered those claims and asked our colleagues where
they got the data, the answer was that they relied on Hamas reports."
“Danon argued that the latest U.N.-backed figures
undermine previous starvation claims and said earlier numbers attributed to
Hamas were fabricated.”
"For the future, we shouldn't count on a terrorist
organization. We are a reliable country, we share data, we share concerns
regarding humanitarian issues, and we should not collaborate with
terrorists," he said.
The new data-based report
noted no widespread starvation as was widely reported:
“Evaluators concluded there was "no widespread
acute malnutrition at population level," noting that rates are
significantly lower than those in neighboring countries, though lingering
challenges like stunting, poor diet diversity and illness remain.”
Danon pointed to the words of
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Human Affairs Tom Fletcher:
“During a 2025 BBC interview about border access,
Fletcher said 14,000 babies were at risk of dying within 48 hours without
immediate nutritional aid. The figure was later clarified as referring to an
11-month projection involving children at risk of severe malnutrition.”
"That was false and did not happen. Using
starvation and babies to spread blood libels against Israel is
outrageous," Danon said of Fletcher's comments.”
"We care about babies in Gaza more than those
making these allegations against us."
Danon says that Israel knew
how much food was entering Gaza and knew that it was enough, despite Hamas
confiscating some of it for themselves.
“We know for a fact that Hamas took the aid and sold it
in the market, taking advantage of the situation with inflated prices," he
said. "That is why we are trying to work with NGOs that are not
infiltrated by Hamas. We want NGOs to be able to deliver aid and food without
Hamas gaining control over it."
He also notes that food
prices are now low in Gaza, showing there is no current food shortage.
Dershowitz: Israel Was Never Colonialist, but During
Hitler’s Time Some Palestinians Embraced Nazi German Colonialism
Alan Dershowitz recently
pointed out that charges of Israel being colonialist are false. He says Israel
was a reaction to European colonialism, imperialism, and oppression in those
countries where Jews lived. Palestinianism, in contrast, he argues, began in
Nazi German colonialism.
“The leader of the Palestinian cause before, during and
even after World War II was Muhammad Amit Al- Husaini, who spent the war years
in Berlin under Adolf Hitler's protection.”
“He preached, "In Heaven Allah, on earth Hitler."
The goal of the two was to
colonize Palestine for the Third Reich. He says they actually planned death
camps for Palestinian Jews modeled after the ones in Poland. Hitler believed
Arabs were inferior to Aryans, but both Hitler and Husaini believed Jews were
subhuman. Dershowitz notes that at the time many Palestinians displayed
pictures of their leader Husaini in their homes, sometimes along with Hitler's.
He argues that in this regard, history has been inverted:
Of course, the chant “from
the river to the sea,” widely believed to call for the removal of Jews from
Israel, could be seen as a call to genocide, since it’s hard to see another way to
remove those who inhabit a country. Those who chant it believe that it would be
a means of “decolonization.”
Below, Dershowitz explains what he sees as inversions of history:
Decolonization is a Dangerous Narrative
Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote
in an October 2023 article in The Atlantic:
“Today’s Hamas apologists and atrocity-deniers, with
their robotic denunciations of “settler-colonialism,” belong to the same
tradition {as Hitler and Stalin} but worse: They have abundant evidence of the
slaughter of old people, teenagers, and children, but unlike those fools of the
1930s, who slowly came around to the truth, they have not changed their views
an iota. The lack of decency and respect for human life is astonishing: Almost
instantly after the Hamas attack, a legion of people emerged who downplayed the
slaughter, or denied actual atrocities had even happened, as if Hamas had just
carried out a traditional military operation against soldiers. October 7
deniers, like Holocaust deniers, exist in an especially dark place.”
The Actual Definition of Genocide and Why Israel’s Actions Don’t Meet It
Gerald Posner recently posted
on Substack an article: ‘’Genocide for Dummies’ which explains how genocide is
defined and why Israel’s actions in Gaza do not meet any definitions of it.
Apparently, people actually believe that Netanyahu and the Israeli leaders want
to eliminate the Palestinian people. That is absurd. He points to and
summarizes a UN definition of genocide:
“Genocide means any of five acts — killing members of a
group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life
calculated to destroy the group, preventing births, forcibly transferring
children — committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
He goes on to explain
historical genocides, other horrific mass killings of civilians that are not
genocide by definition, and argues why Israel’s actions are not genocide. He
writes:
“Gaza’s prewar population was roughly 2.2 million, up
about 70 percent from the 1.3 million who lived there in 2005, when Israel
removed all Jewish settlers, withdrew its troops, and transferred internal
administration to Palestinian control. That sits awkwardly beside the
“seventy-five years of genocide” claim that often travels with the “open-air
concentration camp” framing. A population undergoing continuous extermination
does not grow by 70 percent.”
Israel was also trying to
fight Hamas, hiding its missile launching positions among the population in
tunnels near and at schools and hospitals. Israel was officially at war with
Hamas, not Palestinian civilians, and Hamas was officially at war with Israel
with the completely unrealistic genocidal goal of annihilating Israel and is
willing to die and allow those around them to die for this unobtainable goal,
if only for the martyrdom.
“Fighting Hamas in Gaza kills Palestinians. That is a
fact, and I am not going to soften it with a euphemism. But killing
Palestinians while fighting Hamas and killing Palestinians in order to destroy
Palestinians are different acts with different names, and the entire
architecture of international criminal law rests on keeping them apart.”
He goes on to explain why the UN’s determinations about
Israeli genocide are wrong and don’t meet the conditions, which should be quite
obvious to most, but inexplicably, is not.
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Dark
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Wikipedia. Oxfam - Wikipedia
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How I
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